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WHAT DOES YOUR COUNTRY SAY TO YOU? 


1 — HOLD FAST ! 




- 
WHAT DOES GLORY SAY TO YOU ? 




- HOLD FAST ! 




WHAT DOES VICTORY SAY TO YOU? 


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- HOLD FAST ! 


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COPYRIGHT 

EDITION OUT TRADE 

BY MEANS OF THE PRINT SECRETARY'S 

OFFICE 



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JUN 25 



CASA EDITRICE D' ARTE 
BESTETTI & TUMMINELLI - MILANO 



TO ALL WHO ARE FIGHTING 

ON ITALIAN LAND 

ON ITALIAN SEAS 

IN ITALIAN SKIES 

A FAITHFUL COMPANION 

IN LIFE 

IN DEATH 

AND IN THE FUTURE 

DEDICATES 



. 



TO THE GUARD 
OF THE PIAVE 



SOLDIERS and comrades, a year ago, 
on All Saints' Day, and on All Souls' 
Day, we went singing with bursting 
throats up the crest of the desperate Ve- 
liki. Do you remember ? A song that 
only the stroke of lightning could have 
stopped. 

Stronger than the panting breath of 
our rush was the joy in our breast. Each 
man's whole being was one cry and one 
flame : fire within fire, plunder within 
plunder, as we rushed through the fun- 
nels dug up by explosions, rushed under 
the crash of iron and stone, rushed 
beyond orders and beyond our aim. 

Before us all there was a flag, but our 



12 

own flesh was itself a wisp of throbbing 
tricolour. An immensity of green, white 
and red seemed to cover the whole 
mountain, and that other height which 
had to be taken. Do you remember ? 

Now we are here, motionless. 

The harsh stone of the Carso no long- 
er wavers beneath our footsteps ; but 
our feet are planted on fair soil, our 
heels are dug into the very substance 
of sheer native land, dearer than our 
flesh itself, dearer than our own heart, 
than the heart of all our dear ones. 

We are motionless, comrades. Let us 
make of ourselves a desperate ridge. 

And I tell you now that this our un- 
breakable stand before the invader is 
infinitely more glorious than that rush 
which left no footprints, than that vertigo 
of assault. 

Behold I seem to have sinned in recal- 
ling to your memory ah event wich is 



13 

accomplished. No memory should be in 
us today except the memory of our dead 
who have stayed on where we are no 
more, and of our homes and our altars 
All else is valueless ; all else should be 
silence. 

What if for a thousand days, despite 
weakness and discord, despite fraud and 
betrayal, errors and infirmities, we had 
daily created our courage and our wea- 
pons and our utensils and our craft as 
the prophet invents the future at 
the inspiration of his God ? No matter. 

What if there where all things were 
adverse and perverse, we had untiringly 
tamed places and fortunes, we the last 
elected among soldiers to the greatest 
battle in this great war ? No matter. 

What if we had dragged up our guns 
where even the bread in a man's pocket 
was heavy upon him ? Brought the rush 
of battle where men could hardly creep 
on all fours ? Opened up Roman roads 






14 

where not even the eagle's claw had 
ever settled ? No matter. 

What if we had suddenly hoisted our 
Victory and flown with it over peak 
after peak in seconds of time, there 
where no strength seemed enough to 
overcome the harshness of the heights, 
where the enemy had dug out his 
beast's lairs and defended them unseen 
where each brute mass was worth to us 
its admirable price of blood ? No matter, 
no matter. 

There are no wings — there must be 
no wings — to the victory which is with 
us on this tremendous frontier. 

In other ages, we are told of one who 
snipped off the wing feathers of Victory 
that she might not go away from his 
people. We, that she may not leave us, 
will pitilessly hack away both her wings 
and tie her down thus crippled and 
bleeding in front of the invader. She 
shall be an immortal prisoner on these 



J5 

shores of death. She shall look upon us 
with the inflexible gaze of her virgin 
eyes that are coloured like the waters 
of this holy river. 

Tell me, are there other waters in all 
our country ? 

Tell me, is there thirst in any Italian 
soul that can be slaked elsewhere ? 

Are there other living streams in 
Italy ? I will not remember them, nei 
ther will you. Names of other rivers ? 
I will not know them, neither will you. 

Soldiers from the countryside, sol- 
diers that come from the cities, labou- 
rers, artisans, men of all sorts, from 
every Italian province, forget all else and 
remember that the waters of life are in 
this one river, waters of regeneration, 
waters of a new baptism. 

If a stream pass by your cottage, its 
waters are here. 

If a brook close in your field, its waters 
are here. 



I 






16 

If there be a fountain in your village 
square, its waters are here. 

They flow along your walls, before 
your doors, across the ways of all the ci* 
ties of Italy; they flow past the threshold 
of all our dwellings, of all our churches, 
of all our refuges. They guard all our 
altars and all our homes against the 
destroyer. 

With these waters alone can the thirst 
of your old people be slaked. Otherwise, 
they will perish and desolation will be 
their end. 

Have you heard me ? This ri% 7 er — 
with the name that is masculine accor- 
ding to Venetian tradition, masculine in 
the veneration of all Italians today — - 
this river Piave is the master vein of 
our life, the deepest vein of our country's 
heart. If it burst, the heart stops. Each 
one of us is ready to redeem with all his 
blood every drop which the enemy has 
contaminated. 



17 

Never before, as here, have life and 
death meant one same power of crea- 
tion and liberation. The light of a thou- 
sand victorious days is not worth the light 
of one day's resistance. 

We have rooted victory to this bank, 
and she is with us without flash or fail- 
ing. Let us be certain, all we who fight, 
all we who resist, let us be certain that, 
of a sudden, new wings will grow from 
her open scars, like leaves in Spring; 
and that she will fly swiftly once more 
to hover round our dead who will rise 
up to await her — --* over there, to the 
last of our heroic graves, to the last of 
our wooden crosses — and beyond, and 
beyond. 

And that which was lost for a day 
shall be won for the centuries. 
May Italy live for ever. 






TO A GATHES 

OF OFFICERS 

OF ALL BRANCHES 



COMPANIONS at arms, is there one 
among you who does not know that 
I held the bitterest of silences between my 
clenched teeth in the days of our sudden 
anguish, when the country demanded 
neither lamentation nor imprecation nor 
chorus of exhortation, but only the una- 
nimous act of turning face to the enemy 
never to yield again ? Nor would I speak 
today, were not these words, for you and 
me, as the drawing of breath in the 
midst of the fight, a pause in the battle, 
a way of looking into one another's eyes, 
recognising, summing up one another, 
and taking our oath together once more 
as in the caverns and stone dunes of the 



22 

Carso which is still ours and will be for 
ever ours by that same grace which gives 
possession of the Holy Sepulchre to all 
the faithful. 

I see in your eyes the quiver of a love 
which is pain. 

I cannot remember without a shudder 
those fraternal leavetakings on the edge 
of fate. The little flags, not much larger 
than a man's heart, were like sparks of 
a greater flag. Divinity was present, as 
at the distribution of the eucharistic spe- 
cie. All hands were outstretched to grasp 
one. Some there were who, on the lip 
of a joiba or on the teeth of a ridge, 
held it in a passionate grip, bearing it 
almost stamped on his palm as the mark 
of his country, in the sublime sacra- 
ment of death. You know their names. 
1 hey still cling to those places, as their 
bodies have clung to them. We shall 
find them again, we shall name them 
again. 



23 

We shall find again the love that 
bound us to those stones, that tamed 
their harshness and made the waste pla- 
ces fertile : a love that had hell and dam- 
nation in it, but that was not without 
hope and not without melody. For us 
of the Third Army, the love of the Car- 
so is beautiful as the love of Fate. It can- 
not be deceived nor wiped out nor les- 
sened. 

I recognise some of those lovers 
amongst you. The dearest of them are 
left behind, become one with the rock 
now forsaken by battle as a corpse is 
lorsaken by heat. And I regret now that 
I did not leave the best beloved of these 
dearest ones at Monfalcone in his naked 
grave — the best beloved who went fur- 
ther than any other and had me vith 
him, and shines with falcon-like glory 
between the Faiti salient and the salient 
of the old Trieste road beyond the Ti- 
mavo. He would lie burnine- and whole 



24 

in his tornb. But he is fire for certain 
today, wherever he may be. 

That sacrifice was all of love. In order 
to fight, one had to love and believe. 
One had to divine the features of Italy 
at each leap, beneath the alien crust. 
The jet of one vein was enough, some- 
times, to alter the countenance of a place 
that had been fashioned by many causes 
in the slowness of time. We shed 
this mystic blood in a full tide, along 
stony valleys, up steep slopes, down 
squalid craters, in blackened woods, on 
heaps of ruined houses. We found once 
more the flint and the fever of Rome in 
the shimmer of the deadly marshes. 
Obstinately, we carved out our country 
anew on the saddest of calvaries. 

And now, what shall we do ? 

Some of you have grown pale, unless 
the little sight I have left be failing me. 

Behold, all that love is overcome by 
an infinite wave of blood, is carried away 



25 

by a flood that seems to be without 
source and without end like the flow of 
eternity. 

If that was love, what can this be 
which tortures and multiplies us ? If that 
was sacrifice, what test is being asked 
of us today ? What are we about to 
give ? 

Dyng is not enough. 

If djang means to desist from fighting, 
then we cannot die. We must rise up 
again. The country gives constant birth 
to her strong sons : raises them up and 
hurls them forward. She gives back a 
living man for each dead man, a soldier 
for each one that falls. No place may stay 
empty today. .Wherever there is room 
far a man, there a man must be — 
standing or kneeling, creeping or crawl- 
ing, but ever with a rifle in his hand, 
ever at the service of some new weapon. 

And if weapons fail, anything else 
will do. On the Carso, we rooted up and 



26 

hurled stones. At the Cenghio, one night, 
fists and kicks did their work, teeth and 
nails. And here, shall not the stones rise 
of themselves ? Shall not two arms avail 
to drag down an enemy once he has 
been siezed ? 

Today, we can conquer pain and fury 
with but one intent, with but one sort of 
attention: to aim straight, not to miss 
one's blow. It fills one with amazement 
that our common life should continue to 
flow, that any should find relief except in 
action, that it be possible to smile and 
banter, that any should stop to rest. 

The wounded, if their wound hurt, 
know no peace. If neck or shoulder ache, 
the whole body takes part in that torment 
and cannot sleep. Italy is one nation, a 
mother -country, one same living sub- 
stance; and can the whole not suffer for 
the one part that suffers ? Can she be 
other than unceasingly anxious for the 
one part that is under torture ? Can she 



27 

help being in travail at every instant be- 
cause of this evil which has fastened to 
her and threatens her to her heartstrings ? 

This river where we now stand is not 
the Frigido, nor the Timavo — nor even 
the Isonzo. Beyond it there is not merely 
some land to be reconquered from the 
usurper who witholds it from us. This 
is the Piave, a sheer Venetian river, and 
not the first on this side of the old fron- 
tier — not the first. Beyond, there is no 
desert of stone, no hollow or rock dune 
or mountain calvary or wreck of villages 
and farms, but the pure flower of Italy, 
the truest earthly figure of her soul, the 
straight furrow of our ploughs and our 
history, the antique grace of our little 
cities, worthy to be carried by our Saints 
on their open palms. 

Now the foul maul of the invader is 
upon them. The nauseous beast befouls 
and contaminates our garden. What shall 
we do ? 



28 

We have fought so hard for the Carso 
desert; what shall we do for this pa- 
radise ? 

Let me tell you again that shedding 
our blood is not enough, that no gift is 
enough, that dying is not enough. We 
must live and fight, live and resist, live 
and conquer. 

Multiply yourselves, and multiply your 
men. Let one be as ten, let ten be as a 
thousand. This our Latin war has done 
away with the limitations of glory. Let 
this our Latin war do away with personal 
terms and with conditions of number. 

Some Italian mothers, of those who 
are blessed by the God of Armies, com- 
plain when they have but one son, or 
two or three — and not more — to give 
up. That regret is an act of spiritual 
fruitfulness, it spurs on the effort of the 
flesh and doubles the value of giving. 

Miserable indeed is she who saw her 
son return all of a sudden, disarmed, 



29 

distorted, beside himself — unrecogni- 
sable at first, and cried out : « What has 
happened ? » . 

Needless to ask what had happened : 
it is not worth knowing. In that first hour, 
some of us longed rather to lose all con- 
sciousness than stand condemned to know 
the horror of the thing which had hap- 
pened. Better the darkness of despair than 
that sinister light. Better a desperate 
death than that weight of abomination. 

Behind true courage there is, as in deep 
suffering, a firm power of understanding. 
Our suffering has become a rock, a dia- 
mond. Has not the diamond a property 
of indomitable clearness ? This property 
is also present in our courage and our 
pain, O new men — men who have made 
a compact with truth. 

If there has been shame it shall be 
washed away. If there has been infamy, 
it shall be avenged. The spirit is blowing 
on the unhappy mass, quickening it. 



30 

That mother, on the appearance of her 
mud-bespattered fugitive, stammered "in 
her dismay: « Is this my son? ». 

The blood which was upon him was 
not his own — not that blood which, 
even clotted, has a certain splendour; it 
was the mud of the loathsome road, the 
filth of sewers and holes. There was no 
wound upon him, but something more 
terrible: a brand. Not the brand of the 
slave or the criminal on his shoulder or 
between his brows, but one single brand 
upon his whole body, as if his vile flesh 
had been sent back to a new womb and 
marked there to his greater shame. 

The mother looked upon his unknown 
features and a cry rose from her very 
entrails : a I have not borne you ! » . 

These are the most awful words a mo- 
ther can say, the most terrible of human 
denials. They lacerate and torture anew, 
far more than the spasms of difficult 
childbirth. 



31 

We have heard this cry rise from the 
earth itself, like a voice from within, vi- 
brate along the hills, along shores and 
banks, heard it in the splendour of. land- 
scapes, when the sad, helpless mothers 
passed by with bent heads, as if goaded 
already by an invisible lash. 

Who has said that there is no abysmal 
horror equal to the horror of some hu- 
man faces ? It is true. Those disfigured 
men had lost the imprint of their race 
and all manliness of expression. They 
looked li\e the enemy : an odious re- 
semblance that seemed to have passed 
through from their spines to stamp itself 
on their docile muzzles. They reminded 
one of those mixed herds of prisoners of 
all races that we used to see dragging 
themselves down the Vallone, at fall of 
day after a battle. They all had the same 
earthy colour, as of some excreme"nt, and 
their flaccid belly was the only thing 
they lived by. 



32 

They did not look round ; they looked 
neither back nor forward. Shame had 
put blinkers to their unconscious bestia- 
lity. Each had the back of his accomplice 
for his sole horizon. Strangers on their 
own soil, enemies on their own roads, 
of no land in their own land ! 

One knew not, seeing them, whether 
one's heart misgave one for indignation, 
contempt, abomination or pity. Through- 
out the country, we suffered through 
them : in every clod of earth, in every 
shadow, in every colour, in every fair and 
innocent thing steeped in a beauty that 
had never seemed so poignant. For the 
wiser and more passionate among us this 
land of greenswards and waters, of slo- 
pes and smooth roads, of blue hills and 
melancholy had never possessed so deep 
a grace. It was our own creature, as we 
were its creatures. It came close to us and 
spoke to us, its breath upon our breath; 
it pressed up against us and embraced us 



33 

in an almost human way, trembled on 
our breast, became flesh of our flesh, as 
when a great misfortune gathers together 
those of the same blood ; as when one 
suffers and remembers and fears and 
hopes and despairs together. 

Ah, truly, comrades, of ail the regions 
of Italy this Veneto seems the most 
human, the fairest to those who love it, 
the most sensitive to those who touch it. 
It has come from man, as man has come 
from it. Man has sought it out and saved 
it from the conflict of sea and rivers : has 
raised it up to the sun's heat and warmed 
it with his own self, has fashioned and 
re-fashioned it; made it fruitful and en- 
riched and refined it throughout years 
without number. It seems to have emer- 
ged, not from the gray Paduan marsh, 
but from the ardour of man's faith. 

Thus, you will understand why I speak 
like this today, in this divine , autumn 
passion. None can watch the slight grass 



34 

of a flexible river-bank, the purple and 
the oblivion of a patrician park, an old 
hulk rotting in a lazy canal, a misty fur- 
row in a quiet fie'd, a strip of sunshine 
across a meadow hemmed in by willows, 
a heap of dead leaves at the foot of a 
trophy of worn stones, and not feel each 
of these things becoming within us a 
love that cannot be endured without 
suffering. And the centuries suffer within 
us as the morrow will suffer. And our 
distant forbears suffer within us as do our 
children that are to come. 

But those dark herds without counte- 
nance and without name looked upon all 
these things recognising nothing, under- 
standing nothing. There were hours in 
which the beauty of the earth became so 
violent that it seemed as if it must burst 
open the brows of the very oxen under 
their yokes. But the cry of that denying 
mother did not reach their dehumanised, 
isolated hearts : « I have not borne you ! » . 



35 

And yet, today, our ever renewed faith 
tells us that even for the dullest there 
shall be light ; that the most evil shall be 
saved. 

There is no other escape for them. 
There is no escape for whosoever yields 
or seeks refuge in flight. There is no sal- 
vation except in fighting with all one's 
strength and with all one's weapons. 

Our country's order is not « Foot by 
foot » . Nor is it « Inch by inch » . Our 
country's order todav is : « Do not yield 
the spase of a nail's breadth ! ». 

If there be cowards who hope for for- 
giveness or condonation or indulgence 
from the enemy, they deceive themselves 
ignominiously. This war is without pity ; 
this world war is without mercy. This 
compact has been imposed on us by the 
enemy, observed by the enemy, hourly 
confirmed by the enemy. 

It is a war waged for the abolition of 
one great civilisation for the benefit of 



36 

another that is unworthy; of a great 
history in honour of another that does 
not equal it ; of one great state of con- 
science in favour of another that daily 
proves itself inferior. 

It is unfair to recall the Goths and the 
Herules and the Huns in the face of -this 
rage. The cruelty of those barbarians 
was unconscious ; the cruelty of these is 
meditated, disciplined, coordinated like 
the laws of an explosive. Its frenzy itself 
is like a chemical product. It happens 
that one stops to laugh in the midst of 
horror, when one considers certain antics 
and postures of this massive, mechanical 
beast. 

It must be dismembered. 

Let us persevere. 

What was the cry of the victor to the 
vanquished, a thousand and a thousand 
years ago, under the flash of the two- 
edged sword ? 



37 

(( You are not men, you are things pos- 
sessed by us, of less value than our 
clothes and our vessels and our beds. Of 
your entrails, we wiP make catgut for 
our bows and slings, and keep them for 
the day when we might need them to 
tame the madness of slaves, should a 
chip grow again on the block we have 
felled. But we will leave no roots ». 

Some of you already know the text of 
the war-song found, among stolen things, 
in the pocket of a soldier taken prisoner 
in the invaded Friuli. It is the renewed 
injunction to the invader on the threshold 
of Italy, to the plunderers of churches 
and schools and hospitals, to the torturers 
of women and children and old people. 
« On, children of Germany in arms ! This 
is the hour of glory and merry-making ! n . 

The old hymn had nobler, more agile 
numbers, measured by the step of the 
light sandal, not of the shapeless boot. 
« Your gentle maidens shall be smother 



38 

ed in our clasp. We will shatter your 
children like puppies on the marble of 
your hearths. We will search the womb 
of your mothers, and no germ shall re- 
main in their smoking wounds ». 

The hoarse Teutonic sequence would 
persuade the fool that our unwarlike flesh 
is fit only to manure the fields that shall 
belong to him and his children's children. 
He teaches him that the life of the van- 
quished is taken on by the victor, the 
life of his victim transfused in the one 
who kills, and that the whole life of the 
world must be garnered up in the bosom 
of his own country. 

(( Be not effeminate in your pity for 
women and children. The son of the con- 
quered has often been the conqueror of 
the morrow. What is victory worth if the 
morrow hold its revenge ? And what 
manner of father would you be if you 
were to cut down your enemy and leave 
life to your sons' enemy ? 



39 

« 

<( Children of Germany in arms, for- 
ward ! Blast, break through, cut down, 
pierce, plunder, set on fire, And kill, and 
kill, and kill ! 

« The path of glory is open to you ! » . 

This is the ferocious and foolish song 
gurgling through the ogre's jaws on the 
threshold of Italy the Beautiful. Can we 
ever believe that on the mournful night 
of Caporetto, a chorus of peace should 
have answered it ? It is a thought to make 
one recall the lightning-like punishments 
of the miraculous ages. One imagines a 
mouth suddenly grown cancerous, a ton- 
gue dried up like tinder, a heart suddenly 
become ashes choking an infamous 
throat. 

Comrades it is not true, it cannot be 

true. 

Behold, the new-made heroes of our 
rally are answering with a soul's measure 
of steel, as it is fine to answer, as it is 
Roman and Italian to answer, springing 



40 

up from the earth between Brenta and 
Piave, between the pastures of Asiago 
and the rocks of the Val Gadena, down 
the spurs of the Grappa to the shores of 
the lagoons, from our Alps to our sea. 

And the Italian who kills most today 
shall be the best beloved son of Italy in 
arms, 



TO THE ITALIANS 
OF THE LAI 



THE Italians of the Latin republics — 
Italians by right of blood and cit- 
izens of free America by right of place 
— cannot look upon this, the second call 
of mother Italy, as an invitation, but as a 
command. 

When we were fighing our first war 
beyond the unjust frontier, in the terri- 
tory to be made fee, it might have seem- 
ed to to you that your good wishes and 
3'our hopes were enough to accompany 
the effort your own people were making 
as they went from death to death and 
from goal to goal. You might still have 
thought it enough to lift your heads from 



44 

work or trade to watch the distant face 
of your country across the ocean, 
brought nearer to you by the splendour 
of blood. A new dawn was shining for 
you beyond the great waters. Each one 
of you could repeat the words of the hero 
who one day rode towards the Rio 
Grande with a handful of men : « I am 
proud of the living and the dead. » 

But this second war, separated from 
the first by a black zone of fate, is being 
fought on this other side of the unjust 
frontier : on our own mountains, on out- 
own rivers, on our own plains, on our 
own lagoons, in our own villages, in our 
own cities — in living Italy, over the 
body and soul of the fair country where 
you were all born, where you have suf- 
fered, where you have ever hoped to 
return. 

Nov/ you can no longer tarry to dream 
of your happy return, your a honeyed re- 
turn)). No. The imperious necessity of 



45 

an armed return, is upon each able-bod- 
ied man among you. Your country is 
wounded, torn and burning : your foster- 
mother is deeply scarred on her left 
breast: the one which covers the heart. 
The wound is widening, eating into deep 
substance, threatening the source of life. 
Ir she call you across the dark immensity 
of night, how shall you sleep ? If she call 
you by day, how can you bend over ano- 
ther land to sow seed and gather in crops 
and heap up treasure ? 

You are breathing in another season. 
1 he sun is warm upon your skilled hands. 
I know not what wealth grows under 
your eager eyes. But here there is only 
the wind of a desperate battle, more im- 
placable than the wind of the pampas ; 
here there is the cold of winter and of 
risk, sharp as a fixed bayonet. This, 
exiles, is your season, the weather of 
Italy. 

It seems to me that, if a son's heart 



46 

beat in any or your breasts, the steel of 
your lucrative machines should wound 
you today — should wound you today 
with a sharper hurt than any that conies 
to your brothers who are fighting. You 
cannot work, administrate or gain any 
longer. You must love one another. For 
you too, today, there should be only one 
steel ; that which mows down the in- 
vaders' masses, that which lays the ene- 
my low on bloodstained earth. 

For you and for us, for those who are 
near and for those who are far, for the 
faithful and the unfaithful, it is not a 
question of life or death; it is a question 
of freedom or perpetual infamy. If we 
do not resir,t, if we do not win, you your- 
selves will be humiliated on the land 
which gives you hospitality, crushed 
against the soil that is generous to you, 
your faces buried in your own furrow, 
your necks twisted over your own im- 
plements. 



47 

And the same will happen to your 
children, who knows for how long. From 
generation to generation, you and they 
will be strangers and servants in two 
countries. 

For this reason you are called upon to- 
day to defend both these countries which 
are your own : the one which is bleeding 
under the enemy':; impact and the one 
which is all abundance beneath your toil. 

In your second country, you have made 
the waste places fertile, given ports to 
seas and rivers, founded institutions and 
companies and homes without number, 
made inventions, raised monuments, built 
mighty seats, conquered solemn rights, 
daily exalted your Latin name. But today, 
v/hen the country asks you first of all 
to preserve for her the things that bear 
witness to her past and to confirm the 
foundations of her future, could you bear 
not to rush to her at her cry and not to 
give her the strength of your sinews ? 



48 

Working men, labourers, builders of ci- 
vilisation, perhaps pioneers of beauty, 
your whole work would fall with a crash 
at her fall, and the blood of her mar- 
tyrdom would coagulate upon you to your 
shame. You would become twice slaves, 
twice humbleld. If some of you live in 
Catamarca, let them remember those free 
men who killed their children by dashing 
thern against the rocks that they might 
not know the shame of growing up under 
the conqueror 's yoke. 

Another image is everywhere alive in 
your midst: the image of him, who, on 
being assailed by the Austrian merce- 
naries of John Peter Abrecu at the Barra 
estancia, fought for five hours with only 
fifteen men — one to ten — and won. 

« Each blow that fails means perdi- 
tion ». 

This he repeats to the Italians of the 
peninsula today, and to those beyond the 



49 

seas, almost as if he were present in the 
flesh, speeding them towards the ports 
whence ships sail across the threatened 
ocean. 

He used to lie down to rest in his pon- 
cio which was riddled with lance thrusts 
and bullet holes ; sleeping with one eye 
open, as at Maramba, as at Coritibani, 
that he might be ready to jump up and 
shout, (( To arms ! » 

He still throws out that cry to you, 
with an even mightier heart. The far-off 
Cordillera anwers it. Shall you not an- 
swer it ? 

Are you not also « Sons of liberty », 
like his men who awaited the assault 
kneeling on one knee, like his horse- 
breakers who seemed to have made of 
themselves one impenetrable human por- 
cupine set thick with long quills ? 

Here he comes, riding in from the 
Palos marshes with its five rivers similar 
to an open hand, his heart aching over 



50 

another sadder and more beautiful la- 
goon. 

Here is his Anita, grasping her car- 
bine and still pointing her bronze gun 
on the schooner's deck; here she comes 
swimming through the fury of the river, 
hanging to the neck of her colt and 
urging it on with her powerful voice that 
had the ring of a man's voice. 

Here is his sublime Anzani shouting 
with worn lungs — fuse in hand and one 
foot on the battery's supply of ammuni- 
tion : (( Italians do not yield ! » 

If you return, if you come to fight for 
our divine liberty, O exiles, you will be 
to us as his legionaries were ; you will 
be for our love as the survivors of the 
Cerro, of the Boyada, of the Salto, as 
the sworn legion that refused pay and 
gave of its blood without measure. 

Will you not give all ? And shall not 
he who is poor give as much as the rich 
man ? Much more than the rich man ? 



51 

He too was very poor, as the bride- 
groom of Poverty was poor; he had but 
one shirt. But, more charitable than the 
holy knight who cut his mantle in two, 
he gave his one shirt to an Italian legio- 
nary who was poorer than himself. Was 
it not an act of charity towards his unhap- 
py country ? Nevertheless, as he said later 
to Giacomo Medici : « Not the man, not 
the man ; the country always, nothing but 
the country » . 

We are men today but to dissolve our- 
selves in an infinitely greater life than 
our own life. That our children may not 
lose their reasons for living we must die 
and desire to die. 

Who shall be your pilot if not he who, 
that he might go on fighting, dragged on 
his patched and oft-tarred boat from la- 
goon to lagoon with a hundred yoke of 
oxen ? He shall bring you safely from the 
shores of the Ocean to the Tyrrhenian 
coast. 



52 

And on your landing, perhaps he will 
repeat for you the lesser oration that re- 
sounded on the Tauari : « Let each man 
fight today as if he had four lives with 
which to defend his country and four 
souls with which to love her » . Only, he 
will not say four, but a hundred and a 
thousand. 

And, in future, because of your bound- 
less valour and your boundless love, 
between the two Latin countries, the 
Ocean shall exist no more. 



TO THE ITALIANS 

OF THE UNITED STATES 



\S 



ALL through the first night of our war 
— in the first hour of the first war 
— Rome was silent. Rome was once more 
Rome, as in the austere days of her first 
Republic. Her people threw no vain cla- 
mouring to the May clouds, but offered 
a silent sacrifice to Faith and to Con- 
stancy: the two divinities that preside 
over action. 

From her monuments, that seemed va- 
ster and more solemn in the night, the 
will of the people rose up, vaster and 
more solemn than any monument. 

From near and far, an Italian voice 
told you all that. Do you remember ? An 
Italian sent you that silence as one sends 
an ungraven slab of marble on which 
one word only may be written — the 
greatest of all. 



56 

« Willing exiles under your group of 
stars )), said the voice, « under the symbol 
of liberty, colonists of Rome, pioneers of 
Italy, exiles that I dream of as turned to- 
wards j'our distant country in anxiety and 
vigilance, I wish you could feel the 
power of this silence — you who, with 
your load of love and blood, must cross 
the silent seas to come to the Mother that 
awaits you ». 

But over there, amid the shrieking of 
ceaseless effort and of ceaseless struggle, 
that silence could not be gathered up, nor 
weighed, nor measured. A cry itself is 
vain where space is greater than itself, 
so that it cannot reach out beyond one's 
own throat. The ocean wind disperses the 
odour of even the most acrid blood. 

You were all at your work, intent on 
your toil, intent on your gain, in a deaf 
land, among a people that did not know 
or did not recognise the justice of our 
conflict. You were lost in a tumult of 



57 

disputes, judgements, illusions, false- 
hoods, traffic; of profit and fears and 
avarice. You had despaired of your coun- 
try too much in going to seek your for- 
tunes on other shores. You had been 
humbled too long in your salaried exile 
and so you could not rise up in sudden 
pride. It seemed to you that the oak and 
laurel of our glory could not have deep 
roots. It was not a crown that you wan- 
ted. You stayed on unarmed in the midst 
of an unarmed people, led astray by false 
images. 

But light broke through little by little. 
The stars woven in the flag that protected 
you grew luminous in the sinister sky as 
in a saving dawn. The people of the star- 
sown banner began to understand that 
our cause was their own cause : the cause 
of all free men. 

April, the month of fateful nativities, 
brought the wonderful event. 



58 

Once more, a voice from Italy tried to 
span the ocean. 

« A wreath is blossoming today », said 
the voice, « in the Capitol at Washington, 
which has become a place of exalted 
light for the soul of Italy, like the Roman 
arce » . A wreath is blossoming on the 
bust dedicated to the the hero whom free 
men have called the Knight of Mankind : 
as pure a garland as the sprig of flowers 
laid by the poet on the bier of Abrahan 
Lincoln, sacred as that ever-blossoming 
« lilac with heart-shaped leaves » . 

And it seemed, in that April of storm 
and passion as if there echoed the cry of 
another April also troubled by joy and 
sorrow in the history of the States: • 

« O Captain ! rise up and hear the bells ! 
Rise up ! for you the flag is flung ». 

The group of stars on the great repu- 
blican banner is become a Spring Con- 



59 

stellation like the Pleiades; a mark for. 
armed und unarmed mariners to count 
on, a spiritual sign for all the nations 
fighting in our war. 

From Capitol to Capitol, let Italy's 
greeting reach the people of the United 
States as the highest among those that 
are glorifying the spirit which leads them 
to set a new seal to their compact with 
Liberty. Italy, alone among the allied 
nations, could have avoided war and re- 
mained an inert spectator; yet she rose 
in arms of her own free will not so much 
for the recovery of her heritage as for 
the nobility of free man. She rose in 
arms, as the States are doing today, for 
ideal resons, for an heroic revenge. That 
spontaneous act of hers, like the one the 
people of George Washington are accom- 
plishing today, had the beauty of an of- 
fering to the Hope of mankind. 

This is the miracle of just warfare, the 
miracle which is suddenly shining be- 



60 

yond the Ocean that thieves and murde- 
rers have dishonoured. 

Our war is not destructive but creative. 

The barbarian, with all his atrocities 
and all his shamefulness, has tried to 
abolish the idea man had of himself until 
the eve of this conflict. And now, we can 
once more place our hope in the higher 
nature of man. 

The barbarian has abased heroism, bu- 
ried it deep and rolled it in dissolution ; 
he has pulled down the aereal cathedrals 
wherein the aspiration of the everlasting 
soul had culminated. He has undone and 
burned down the seats of learning that 
the flower of all the arts had adorned. 
He has distorted the features of Christ 
and torn open the bosom of the Mother of 
God. And now, beauty overflows and 
pours down on the world like a torrent 
in iMay: our hearts are large enough to 
receive and hold the whole of it. 

The great people of the star-spangled 



61 

banner, springing up to defend the eter- 
nal spirit of man have increased beyond 
measure this sum of beauty which we 
have set up in opposition to the fury and 
jangle of barbarity. 

(( O Liberty, let others despairs of you ; 
but I will never despair ! » is the cry of 
your own lion-hearted poet. 

Because of this hope all your people, 
north, south, east and west are giving up 
their accumulated wealth, recognising in 
our cause the greatest cause that men 
have ever had to fight for. 

You were an enormous mass made 
dull by power and riches. Behold you 
are transormed into ardent and active spi- 
rituality ; you are become a race a of 
storm and passion » ready for the fight, 
erect in the face of a future greater than 
your whole past. The beat of the Man- 
hattan drums has drowned the last whi- 
nes of cowardice. 

The 11th of April is the anniversay of 



62 

Abraham Licoln's death. The great 
words rise again from his tomb that he 
spoke in the cemetery of Gettysburg, on 
the soil twice sanctified by the bones of 
the dead and the blood of the comba- 
tants. All the States north, south, east 
and west must surely hear it in the Atlan- 
tic night, where the Spring constellation 
alone seems to be shining: 

« This nation, under God, shall have 
a new birth in freedom » . 

And then it appeared as if you your- 
selves were about to find new birth within 
the sheltering nation, henceforth illumi- 
ned and fully awakened. The comforts of 
a useful peace no longer corrupted you. 
You could not remain unarmed in the 
midst of a people that were rushing to 
arms ; nor, in the midst of a nation thirst- 
ing to throw its treasure into the melting 
pot, could you keep or increase your own. 
You were the sons of a nation at war 



63 

adopted by another country at war : 
combatants in virtue of a dual claim. 

Did he who was rich forsake his wealth 
and he who was poor forsake his trade ? 
Did the young offer their youth ? Did old 
age give the strongest of its sons ? Did 
the unfit bend to the humblest tasks, so 
that they might serve the good cause ? 

A sickliness persisted, an ambiguous 
discomfort. Light had not quite dawned. 
One eye only was open, under uncertain 
lids. 

The people of the United States did 
not rise up against all barbarians, did 
not face all our enemies, did not arm 
Right against all its violaters; but they 
established a difference between barba- 
rian and barbarian, separated enemy 
from enemy, distinguished empire from 
empire. They declared war against Ger- 
many but not against Austria ! They left 
on one side our immediate adversary, the 
one who was face to face with us on the 



64 

Alps and on the Carso, the one against 
whom they knew that our argument was 
cold steel, and courage against fraud, im- 
pulse against cunning, unanimous ardour 
against hidden discord. Having risen at 
one bound in defence of Right « dearer 
than life », they yet respected the most 
odious century-old restrictor of all rights 
and all liberties, honouring as a nation 
a jumble of different nationalities herded 
together and forced to defend without 
faith not a free fatherland, but falsehood 
constituted on violence. 

Once more, suffering has been the ter- 
rible lode-star of an unjust world. 

It was but a rising sun, though the sha- 
dows were ever slighter. It had to reach 
its zenith for the noonday of mankind to 
shine — axis and light of this ultimate 
day. 

We too had not suffered enough, had 
not bled enough, had not atoned enough 
for our sins against ourselves. 



65 

We have had to suffer through the law 
of all redeeming sacrifices on this earth. 
We have had to suffer betrayal and de- 
nial. Our country has been made to feel 
something of the sadness of the divine 
Victim who sat among his disciples at 
the Last Supper. « The hand that betrays 
me is here ! » Nevertheless. He had His 
eleven faithful ones with im too. 

Were not Italy's eleven victories with 
her ? And . the twelfth was the « dark » 
one, the one of Iscariot, that gave her to 
the enemy. 

You know it now. We have suffered 
blows and injuries and shame — all there 
is of anguish. And we are still here, still 
in arms. Let us clench our teeth on our 
pain and turn it into hard purpose. Let 
us be twice Italians, henceforth. 

You too must be twice Italians hence- 
forth, in the land of your common toil 
and your daily conquest. 

The United States have made our pur- 



pose theirs. They understand and con- 
firm our vital necessity. « Austria is a 
decrepit falsehood that is crumbling to 
pieces. It is right that she should crum- 
ble, right before God and man. It is 
right and inevitable that she should be 
dismembered and disappear. If in her 
Empire there happen to be nationalities 
worthy of survival, let them trace out 
their origins in the light of our victory 
and let them link themselves anew to the 
life of their renovated countries »-. 

Recognising our enemy as their enemy, 
recognising at last the sacredriess of our 
war, the people of George Washington 
reconsecrate and arm you, make of you 
their soldiers and ours, link you with 
themselves and with your own race, 
stamp you and baptise you in the truth 
of the One Cause. 

They are coming. They do not incite, 
nor impel nor send you. They come with 
you. And shall you not all come ? 



67 

All — with a thousand ships that shall 
be as one ship. 

Do you know the name of the ship on 
which the youth Garibaldi sailed for the 
first time ? 

Her name was « Constance » — a hum- 
ble and marvellous name. 

To his last breath the Hero could never 
think of that ship without sighing : « Oh 
Constance — how beautiful you were ! » 

Let it be the ideal name of every ship 
that brings you back across the Ocean, 
Italians of the United States, soldiers who 
are twice crusaders. 

Let each one of you see this name shi- 
ning on your homeward bound prows, 
carved with Venetian chisels, gilded with 
the blood of the eighteen-year-old sol- 
diers who fell in the guard of the Piave ! 
And the hero of tomorrow shall awaken 
in each one of you. 

Tomorrow will not be too late. Our 
real war is but beginning. 



TO THE 1899 RECRUITS 



COMPANIONS of the last call, last-born 
of your blood-stained Molther, the 
laurel has put forth new leaves for you 
today in the furrow of war. 

An armed Muse cuts it, bends it and 
binds it. Your crown shall be neither of 
oak nor of ash, but of laurel. And, if the 
true poet be he who ever lives in his own 
mood, I will speak my poet's language to 
you here without reticence, that I may 
set free the song shut up within your 
hearts and the courage which is panting 
within you. 

There are some among you, I know, 
for whom it is enough to remember the 
colour of the Natisone waters under the 
arch of the bridge — and straightway an 
impatience seizes them to fight and die, 

To you I can at last deliver this unmeas 



72 

ured ode. Each one of you feels what 
is known to every hero in his hour of 
sudden ecstasy r that war is nothing if 
not a lyrical event, an enthusiastic 
outburst of the will to create. 

Young men — cultured and uncul- 
tured — who are about enter the firing 
line, you who are in the first flower of 
your youth, who are still warm from 
your mother's breath, you have learned 
in an instant what is not revealed to the 
adult after years and years of studious 
thought. What Dante believed he had 
come to understand after having « rea- 
ched in his life the middle of its way », 
after rising from torment to torment and 
from light to light throughout his three 
v/orlds, you have learned in the twink- 
ling of an eye-lash. No power, human 
or divine equals the power of sacrifice, 
hurled forward into the darkness of the 
future and evoking therein new images 
and a new order. 



73 

Where does the spark go which is 
kindled in your tumultuous heart in that 
instant between the first leap of an as- 
sault and the cry sent up on the edge 
of the enemy's trench ? It goes where 
not even the vision of your clear eyes 
may reach. 

None knows what is before us, although 
all know that a magnificent destiny 
is in process of formation, not only on 
the face of the earth, but in the vortex 
of man's being. The most perspicacious 
of seers cannot discern the modes of this 
troubled genesis, nor distinguish the 
marks of its impression ; but he can di- 
vine the rythm — set ringing by passion 
and victory — of a lyrical force that is 
about to be made manifest at the apex 
of every future height. 

You are indeed a wonderful gathering, 
as you stand there, light and robust at 
one time. The virile artisan of your race 
has shaped you in a happy hour, with 



74 

his best substance, and lias given you 
of his cleanest vigour. Truly' the election 
of old — the election of our « gentle La- 
tin blood )) is made flesh in you a gentil 
sangue Latino ». 

Truly it would seem that this high pri- 
vilege of (( gentle Latin blood », has ne- 
ver been so luminous in any youth as in 
this moment of your own youth; gentil 
sangue Latino. 

Whether you come from Sicily or from 
Lombardy, from Puglie or Sardinia, from 
Liguria or Calabria, from whatever re- 
gion, from, whatever village and from 
the shadow of whatever steeple ; whether 
you be dark or fair, light-eyed or dark- 
eyed, under steel helmets or coarse cloth, 
you all bear the same sign of bro- 
therhood because the same grace has 
touched you : gentil sangue Latino. 

You are pure and spotless, unhurt by 
life, similar to those changing counte- 
nances that wind and light create on the 



75 

sea's vicissitude. Our hopes breathe in 
from you the innocence of our new time, 
they grow wide within us and intoxi- 
cate us. 

You are the aroma of battle to us. 

You are the maidenhood of Victory. 

Once, I saw one of you sleeping pla- 
cidly, worn out, on the very thread of 
danger, where a veteran could not have 
closed an eye. 

He slept wch his bare head on his 
curved arm, like a shepherd at noon. 
His posture was simple as the blossom- 
ing of a flower, it was like those gest- 
ures that the makers of eternity engraved 
on the underground walls of their se- 
pulchres. 

Beside that scantily bearded face, I 
could see his mother's face, pressed 
close to him, cheek to cheek, as in the 
pictures of the Deposition from the Cross, 
where the face is made fleshless by suf- 
fering and sublime through fervour. 



76 

And now, your mother gives you up to 
war : she who wiped away your first tears, 
taught you your first words, guided your 
first footsteps, she who advised, forgave 
and comforted you, drives you out to 
the zone of fire and cries out to you: 
<( Go and fight ; go and win ; go and 
die ! » . 

Is it to protect her hearthstone that she 
does this ? Or the bed on which she 
rests, the cloth on her table, the smok- 
ing platter of food ? 

But what are these things worth to 
her, if you be not there ? 

Certainly these things must be preserv- 
ed ; but there is another which is above 
them all. Whether she be a peasant of 
the countryside or a working woman of 
the towns, whether she be one of those 
who find some alleviation of their an- 
xiety in ease, or one of those who find 
it in their own effort, whether she be 
rich or poor, she understands that above 



77 

all these good things there is another 
to which immolation is due. 

She tears you from her side and sends 
you to fight. If she be strong, she does 
not weep. Should she faint under the 
wrench, she will hide her tears and still 
say to you : « Go, son. We cannot not 
win; we must, if needs be, die ». Why 
does she do it ? 

To reconquer a ridge of the Alps, a 
stretch of gulf, a plot of earth hung over 
the sea, a garland of islands, a jewelled 
strip of Latin beach ? Certainly, also for 
this. But the great cause is not the cause 
of the soil, it is the soul's cause and the 
cause of immortality. 

If none know it, you know it. But all 
know it by now — even they who, far 
away from here, still care for their own 
chatter and their vain revels. 

In the first war — the war of yesterday 
— the drama was veiled, like lightning 
gathered in a belated cloud. For the 



78 

more conscious among us as for the more 
simple, it was, beyond the splendour of 
action and the jubilation of the brave, 
a war of anguish. The nation was like 
an ambiguous sunset with a flaming ho- 
rizon. The myrrh of heroic wills was 
not enough to drown the groan of our 
stifled tragedy. 

Who shall say whether fate be just 
or unjust to us ? Are there scales for 
the inexorable ? If so, all our hands may 
grasp of them is the crossbar — a rigid 
rod of iron that cannot be falsified. 

Had we ever looked this our destiny in 
the face, standing straight up against an 
alpine wall or on a Carso ridge ? It lay 
behind us, not before us : behind the veil 
of sweat and blood. Of a sudden it has 
struck us. We had to turn back that we 
might recognise it. 

A blow may ennoble him who receives 
it. And this is not. an enigma. 

The drama is now unveiled and iso- 



79 

lated. It is there, naked and alone. It has 
the nakedness of winter and of struggle. 
We cannot escape it, but we can domi- 
nate it. Our passion can be the stronger. 
And in order to find our salvation and 
to reach our greatness, all we have today 
is just our passion, with all that provokes 
and hurls and sustains passion. The rest 
does not help us. The old history, the 
old glory do not help us, as our old 
ignorance does not hinder us and our 
old shame does not weigh heavy on us. 

Now alone is Italy young, and new, 
O young men ! Hers is that same quality 
which is in your eyes and in your veins. 
She stands before her destiny bare as 
when she emerged from her seas. Who 
cries out to you that she has her whole 
civilisation to defend ? All her civilisation 
is not worth her real soul. It is her real 
soul which must be defended. 

A terrible and sublime task : the high- 
est that has ever been set her from the 



80 

birth of Rome to her baptism in the Pia- 
ve waters. 

It seems to me that I have only been 
given up by death in order to announce 
the coming of him who shall sing her 
destiny, in the time when the lungs of 
all free men shall breathe once more 
through the ringing voice of one man. 

To you I can at last speak thus. To 
your newness, all the past is worth less 
than the shed skins of snakes that a 
seed-laden wind blows away. History is 
not worth more to you than those le- 
gislators' pages that rebels used to make 
stoppers of and crammed into the bore 
of their muskets to press down powder 
and shot. 

What is the testimony of the centuries 
to you ? I myself deny it. Was it the 
mummies of Venzone that marched ye- 
sterday against the invader, singing the 
song of the Bidernuccio ? Was it Ma- 
donna Anastasia who gave the destitute 



81 



Friulans all her plate to melt into cannon 
balls ? The Friulans themselves have 
indeed given all their metal to the enemy. 
For me, certainly it was enough to 
enter the cathedral of Cividale to feel 
our whole lineage stirring in my bones ^ 
But if I, damaged as any other comba- 
tant, with my extinguished eye that does 
not remember enjoying the privilege of 
gazing on the world and does not con- 
sider itself more precious than the eye 
of any peasant soldier, only suffer be- 
cause of having given so little, and long 
to give more and put on my leather tunic 
and my leather cap and mount on my 
aeroplane with my companions and go 
forth as near as possible to the enemy 
and dispense all my bullets ~- never 
thinking, in an instant of peril, that my 
bram might be worth more than that 
of my pilot, or my life to aft worth more 
than that of the little soldier in the turret 
behind me; if I try to annihilate myself 



82 

in an act of nameless courage; if I make 
the supreme gift of myself to my country, 
unconscious and dispossessed of memory, 
then am I the son of a new Italy, I take 
uo the cross of a new Italy, I serve the 
cause of a new Italy. Therefore I am 
worthy to stand up before you and to 
look you in the face, young myself, once 

more. 

Italy, sad and dear, seems to have 
become worn and mis-shapen through 
giving birth to too much beauty, like 
those fruitful women of her own soil, 
grown old in their plentiful childbearing 
and who now, bent over their thresholds, 
are sending out towards death handfuls 
of well-built sons torn from their gene- 
rous breasts. 

When has there been in the universe 
a creature with greater resistance or one 
endowed with a more tenacious life ? 

Her enemies throw her down in turns, 
tread upon her neck, break her spine 



83 

and snap her backbone, And she rises 
again. 

They search her entrails, burn her 
through and through, sterilise her with 
fire and iron ; and straightway she begets 
a sudden new world. 

She is broken into bleeding and smok- 
ing fragments; and a grimn-like smith 
forges her anew in his black forge at 
the flame of his hell. 

She has the brand of servitude in the 
middle of her thoughtless forehead — 
and a left - handed scribe carves the my- 
stery of her vertical wrinkles in hermetic 
characters between her brows. 

She is adorned and painted like a 
courtesan at her window, inclined to 
yeild to the handling of every violent or 
spendthrift passer by; and a giant stone- 
cuter remodels her to resemble the dawn 
and throws his infuriated hammer at her 
to impel her to rise. 



84 

What living or beautiful or profound 
thing is there between the Mediterranean 
and the Arctic seas, between the Atlantic 
and the Caspian that is not born of her ? 
She has made modem man, has trans- 
formed Christianity, has liberated free- 
dom itself. Of all her works, she has 
made a finished art: of all tumults, a 
sudden conquest. She has found the clay 
for her figures in the most troubled floods. 
With the ashes of all idols she has re- 
fashioned the gods of her Genius. 

What would it profit us now to carry 
these titles of our nobility fixed to the 
points of our bayonets against the clumsy 
cartoons of the Austrians made gay by 
our wine ? We have burned them and 
will continue to burn them, to make 
more ashes of them, not for accumula- 
tion, but for dispersion to the four winds 
like superfluous seeds. 

Let me tell you this, light-footed sold- 
iers. There was no more encumbered 



85 

country than ours until today; but there 
is none now which is more completely 
delivered. At last an agile leap may 
carry us bej/ond century-old impediments. 
We have no more history. Our history 
begins from today and we will make it 
alone with our passion. No experience 
shall serve us except the anguish we 
have suffered. The extreme issue is be- 
tween us and fate, between us and the 
life which is to come. 

In this our real conflict there is noone 
who can really help us. As we alone 
stopped the enemy on the Piave, alone 
we will give ourselves our victory. And 
we alone know what that victory must be. 

And, as none help us, none under- 
stand us. Let us add pride to pride. Let 
us greet the coming of the allies, let 
us celebrate their fraternal swiftness, let 
us draw the highest omens from this 
mingling of blood. But these know little 
more of us than the Barons of Charles 



86 

of Anjou or the English archers in the 
pay of Giovanni Acuto. They sniff the 
blue wind that blows from the Euganean 
hills, or the greener breath that coines 
from the orchards of the Marca Gioiosa, 
as one drinks in the perfume -of some 
enchanting sorceress. They will fight 
admirably for the beautiful body of Italy. 
We will fight for her soul, alone. 

Italians, if beauty is to be sacrificed, 
it will also be avenged. The value of 
sacrifice is always to be measured by 
the strength which man receives from it. 
Every city we have is a masterpiece of 
the spirit. If we give it up to destruction, 
the stones may perish but the spirit will 
live to demand and to order some new 
form for our worship. 

Necessity cannot be abolished. The 
furnace cannot be quenched: it burns 
and roars and devours. What have we 
to throw into the great flame 3 We will 



87 

throw all' if need be : even our most 
sacred canvases. 

The enemy thought us a people of va- 
cillating custodians. He thought that, if 
threatened, we would immediatly deliver 
up the keys of ail our doors on a silver 
platter, imploring him as we bowed down 
before him : « Pass, O invincible ones : 
but pray do not hurt the fret-work of 
our architrave ». 

There is more ideal value for us today 
in a smooth metal helmet than in the 
headpiece chased by Benvenuto : in two 
ells of gray cloth than in the chasuble 
of Aeneas Silvius, in a precise machine 
gun than in the culverin of Alfonso 
d'Este, chiselled like the hilt of a dagger. 

To do what fate wills us to accomplish, 
a higher power is needed than that which 
is made manifest in the walls of the Scro- 
vegni and in the gesture of Colleone. 

A sailor comrade, watching a port of 
Romagna from his submarine writes me 



as 

that the oil of Pirao no longer feeds the 
votive lamp over Dante's tomb — - the 
soldier of the charge at Campaldino. 
The phial is empty and the lamp is 
burned out. 

What matter, so long as there and 
elsewhere the unanimity of our faith be 
kept burning, and our sleepless oil serve 
to anoint the engines of our war ma- 
chines ? 

A more imperious love frees us from 
all we have loved before. And not even 
the most fervent among you knows where 
our virtue of sacrifice is about to lead us. 

The spirit of life is with us, the lyrical 
force of enthusiasm, in virtue of which 
even our sepulchres are bursting like old 
casks under the vehemence of new wine. 

Life is not with our adversary. Those 
inarching battalions that are to be mowed 
down by us are as lifeless as the corpses 
that fill up the crevasses of our moun- 
tains. 



S9 

If this two-faced war shows him only 
its bestial countenance, to us it shows 
its divine one : today more divine than 
yesterday, mirrored in the dauntless light 
of your eyes. 

A nation that v/as young once chose 
as a watchword in its most wonderful 
battle the virgin name of youth: ((Hebe», 
in the times when war was an invention 
of energ3' impressing the victorious num- 
bers of chorus and dancers on the mo- 
vement of armies. 

You, who cannot hear the song in your 
veins because of this incessant thunder, 
are of their number. You are also the 
leaven of creative will. 

And for you toda}% in the furrow 
ploughed by battle, the laurel is sprout- 
ing: anew. 



THE WINNER CANNOT WIN 
THE LOSER CANNOT LOSE 




Y the grace of fate, I receive from 
your hands today the high recom- 
pense which His Majesty the King of 
England has deigned to bestow on a 
willing so'dier of the Good Cause, in an 
Italian camp, under the Italian sky which 
is being daily avenged by British wings, 
while the wind of the victorious race just 
run across the sea of our ancient vows and 
of our new liberties is not yet lulled in 
my spirit. 

Thus it seems to me that I am less un- 
worthy of this sign today, here among 
these combatants who both on land and 
in the skies, have ever c? t rried with them 
the deep instincts of your island mariners. 
The breath of the Seven Seas is in the 



94 



folds of your flag, wheresoever it flut- 
ters. Its vigour and vastness is in all your 



wings. 



Brothers among brethren, on this field 
already made glorious by you, you may 
breathe with us today the breath of the 
Adriatic, where the mouth of the Piave 
bears witness to your sky-hued victories. 
We have fought hard to liberate it, and 
you are fighting with us in our Rally 
that it may be liberated. Under this Cross 
of War beats the same faithful heart that 
once more, in the face of the enemy, 
confirmed his country's will On the night 
of the Quarnaro. 

The will to win, fidelity to the stern 
compact, a religious certainty in the ful- 
filment of the law. 

It is for us that your youthful poet sings 
— he who was burned on a scented pyre 
at the foot of the Apennines, within sight 
of the Tyrrhenian of Ulysses and the Mii- 
le, the Poet of Prometheus Unbound, the 



95 



heart of hearts — « 1 houghts have awa- 
kened and the powers will not sleep 
again. Truth, raised up on her throne 
with Joy shall reign over her lost empire. 
Victory, Victory, Victory to the pro- 
strate nations ! ». 

Behold, the ashes of that pyre — built 
of Italian wood — are become fertile as 
pollen in Spring. 

Our fourth spring of war will be sub- 
merged in a deluge of blood. That will 
not matter. Your certainty neither halts 
nor wavers. This mortal conflict is go- 
verned by a tragic and mystic law. 

The enemy cries out that he is every- 
where the winner, yet he has not the 
power to win. He cries out that we have 
lost everywhere, yet we cannot lose. The 
winner cannot win; the loser cannot lose. 
A marvellous fatality towers above num- 
bers and bayonets and machinations and 
corruption. 



96 

The cause for which the enemy is 
exhausting himself is a dead and unclean 
weight which will end by crushing him. 
All our errors and all our dissensions 
have not compromised and cannot com- 
promise our Jiving cause : the finest that 
was ever put before man to fight for. 
That cause can only win and receive its 
crown of triumph. 

Once more, that poet of yours who 
was drunk with Italy shall sing from his 
resinous pyre, lit once again on our 
shores : (i My brethren we are free ! » . 

The great English people, rooted in 
perseverance, are the surest guarantee of 
the compact which binds us. 

A soldier among soldiers, I receive this 
mark of honour as a command to perse- 
vere even to the hardest sacrifice and 
beyond the beauty of death, 



THE WINGED SHADOW 
AND THE SHADOW 
OF THE CROSS 



THE powerful words of the man — - 
all will and fervour — who today 
restores the fate of Italy's wings and 
governs them, seems to have armed and 
amplified our sky. The glorification of 
that heroic swarm is in the cry of this 
triumphant Sunday itself, in the very 
clamour of ardent spirits and waving 
palm branches : Glory to the most High 
— Hosannah in excelsis ! 

This is a day of faith consecrated by 
a cry of joy. Life is faith today, and faith 
is glory. For all the nations fighting in 
the good cause — for ours more than for 



JOO 

any other, for us Italians more than for 
any other men — life is faith today and 
faith is glory. 

It is necessary to believe. It is an es- 
sential necessity for us, the same as 
breathing or the beat of our pulses. 

To believe means today to live and 
win. 

To believe means holding and trium- 
phing. 

While France and England are bleed- 
ing anew and without stint in a despe- 
rate encounter on the same soil, while 
the new menace gathers on our moun- 
tains, let us strengthen in ourselves that 
will which may aptly be named a solar 
will. 

We cannot lose for the same divine 
reason in virtue of which the sun cannot 
cease to shine. 

We cannot, because we must not. 

Light cannot be destroyed in the world. 
And the cause of free men cannot be 



JOX 

abolished, human dignity cannot be aba- 
sed for centuries in this red mire in which 
a mad beast is venting its fury. 

War is transcending element after 
element : passing from earth to water and 
from water to air. Victory flies as in the 
old myth, not with two wings, but with 
a thousand and a thousand wings. 

O country, thy Victory that never fails 
has cast away the two wings that Rome 
had given to it : it is thick with wings I 
It has more wings on its shoulders than 
there are hairs in a lion's mane. 

This is a lyrical image and a practical 
force. 

But today, that the will of the whole 
nation may exalt Italy to the dominion 
of the skies, an act of public faith is 
needed. 

The people of stricken Naples have set 
us an example. The refugees from the 
Adriatic have set us the same exemple. 
East and west, the flame and the call are 



J02 

one. Naples has given three battle planes 
to the nation in one day. The refugees 
(rom the eastern coast have offered one 
to a naval squadron in the name of Na- 
zario Sauro, and I believe I am to have 
the honour of receiving this gift. I swear, 
with my companions, that 1 will lead it 
there whence there is no return. 

Some may remark : « Since the build- 
ers are turning out wings in such num- 
bers, what is the value of this one slight 
gift ? » . 

It is no slight gift; it is a sign of faith. 
The humblest offering is an act of faith 
in the service that alone can win the war. 
Let die Air League demand of all Ita- 
lians this one pledge : one copper coin 
given generously, and as if the hand that 
offers it were being held over flames to 
bear witness or upon the Cross for an 
oath. 

Our heroes know, the living and the 
dead know, that the shadow of the win- 



103 

ged machine is like the shadow cast by 
the Sign of sacrifice and redemption. 

The similarity between the two sha- 
dows struck me on the field of Goras, 
one already far off day of that other war, 
when I saw the machine, all covered 
with blood, brought back by Oreste Sa- 
lamone with its burden of death. Its 
double transverse wings, from prow to 
screw, .formed a cross of blood. 

There is a song of the dead, a song 
of. the immortals, that proclaims this 
likeness. 

« Mount Grappa, you are my coun- 
try )) . ... are the first words of the tortured 
slave children's lament. And it seems as 
if it were continually trembling in the 
air we breathe — the air which carries 
their pain to our hearts. 

« Oh wings of Italy, you are my faith ! » 
confess those from among us who have 
been torn and crushed and burned ; who 
have constituted on earth a single hole- 



104 

caust newly caught up into Heaven by 
the spirit of fire. 

If we all, citizens and combatants, 
working men and soldiers, producers and 
organisers, rich and poor, will only 
repeat this cry of the air, then today's 
ceremony in our admirable Milan that 
stretches its hands out to our heroes, will 
indeed stand as a rite proclaiming the 
virtue of a new country. 



EASTER — DAY OF PROMIS) 



\S 




OMRADES, on the occasion of this red 
Easter — this da?/ of promise — 
the magnanimous Duke who was named 
(( Orient » in the first Carso war, Oriens 
nomen eias, has crossed us with the white 
cross, marked us with the sign for which 
men live and die. That name which is 
full of light sheds light on us all. For all 
the faithful hearts of the third Army, the 
Carso Easter morning still illumines our 
Venetian plain, transfiguring it. And, 
though our feet are now planted on 
grassy soil ,our spirit wanders in a desert 
of stone. 

I maintain that today too we are cele- 



108 

brating a Carso Easter: I maintain that 
for all us soldiers who have crossed and 
re-crossed the blood-filled Vallone, this 
is still a Carso Easter. 

Does it not seem as if the wind brought 
us a growl of bronze like the voice of 
overturned bells ? This Easter Saturday, 
bells of fire have been untied in the 
desert of thirst, in the land of drought, in 
the waterless solitude. Let us listen to 
their voice which reminds and recalls, 
reproves and promises. 

Over there, blood is seething and glist- 
ening in the chalice of the air. It pours 
out from the edgeless cup, overflows from 
the rimless bowl. It repeats one word 
only, as in the closed Coenaculum : « This 
is my blood. Let all drink of it ». Again it 
exclaims : « Let all drink of it » . 

Once more it repeats the words and 
cries : « Let all drink of it » . 

For the third time it repeats the words 
and shouts: « Let all drink of it ». 



109 

It is the blood that coloured the Isonzo 
as far as Sdobba. 

The blood of San Michele of the four 
peaks. 

The blood of San Martino.. 

The blood of Monfalcone. 

The blood of Vermigliano . 

The blood of Rubbia. 

The blood of Boscomalo. 

The blood of Doberdo. 

The blood of Merna. 

The blood of Debeli. 

The blood of Pecinka. 

The blood of the Veliki. 

The blood of the Faiti. 

The blood of all burning calvaries, of 
all infernal valleys. 

The blood of all our thirsty victories. 

The blood that made fruitful the for- 
saken road to Trieste, the barren road. 

The blood that was washed away at 
the springs of the Timavo. 

Soldiers, each one of vou should drink 



HO 

of it. Your hearts should be filled with 
it. Your breast should widen to receive 
it. It will never suffocate you, but will 
give you power over death. 

Your country cries out to each one of 
you in the morning, as the Lord of Hosts 
cried out in the twilight : « Take up this 
cup filled to the brim with the wine of 
my wrath » . 

She repeats and commands each one : 
« Take up this cup » . 
She administers a sacrament that makes 
you all partakers of her divinity and her 
passion, of her miserable humanity and 
her immortal hope. 

For so great a sign, the words of the 
Saint are indeed appropriate : « Though 
she be infinitely wise, yet she knows not 
what more she can do : though she be 
infinitely powerful, these is nothing more 
that she can do ; though she be infinitely 
generous, there is no more that she can 
give ». 



m 

And the supplication of old is renewed 
for us : « O Earth, O Earth ! Do not cover 
up this blood, do not extinguish this cla- 
mour ! )> 

Why does the face of our country res- 
emble the face of the Son of Man ? 

The living Son of Man is transfused 
into all coutries that are suffering and 
struggling for the redemption of the 
world. 

Ours has had her night of Gethsemani, 
her mortal anguish, her bloody sweat, 
the kiss of infamy, the bruise of shame. 

« O shameful night, let no man num- 
ber it among the days of my year ! » is 
the prayer of her sorrow. 

The traitor said : « What will you give 
me — and I will deliver her up into your 
hands ? » . 

1 oday, she is able to say : « You are 
cleansed : but not all of you » . 

She can also say : a Watch thou in 



m 

arms, and feel that my gaze is upon thee, 
if thcu wilt not fall into the temptation 
that awaits thee ». 

She has no time to weep over all her 
crucified ones, nor must she weep. 

There was a fair land of Galilee, garb- 
ed, spring-like, in flowers. And ours 
was even fairer, nobler, more fateful, 
decked with even brighter flowers. Men 
have died and still die for greatness and 
beauty when these have no limit. 

Those who are dead have given their 
life as a price for the world. 

Those who suffer and work give their 
toil as a price for the world. 

Those who must still surfer and fight 
and die, will suffer and fight and die for 
the price of the world. 

We are celebrating the Resurrection, 
We are still in the full acrimony of 
struggle and torment. We should perish 



1*3 

in order to be born anew, and we are 
loath to perish. 

The Cross with all its weight is still 
with us, but we will carry it up to the 
height. If we have fallen, we will rise 
again. If we fall again, we will rise again. 
As often as we fall, we will rise again, 
untiringly. 

Our Christ today is the one we saw 
at the cross-roads under fire, that had 
lost its two feet like a soldier caught by 
a large splinter. It is still there, nailed 
to the cross by the left hand, but it hangs 
forward against the enemy, its thorn- 
pierced brow held out to the shock, its 
outstretched right hand still sharp with its 
transfixing nail as with a desperate weap- 
apon. 

Of His winding cloth and His ban- 
dages they have made fetters with which 
to bind the pierced hands and feet of the 
nations, ropes with which to strangle them . 

They have burned our churches, rob- 



V^ 



iU 

bed our fields, defiled our Holy Hosts, 
contaminated our relics, soiled our hous- 
es, uncovered our graves, made barren 
our furrows, dispersed our seed, cor- 
rupted our springs, struck our old men 
and our children, shamed our women, 
made slaves of our younger brethren. 

He who wept by the grave of Lazarus, 
who wept over the faithlessness of Jeru- 
salem, He who wept in the Garden of 
Olives, He can weep no more. 

He does not weep. He fights. He suf- 
fers and fights with us, with the unparted 
nations, with a single and free people 
worn out by war but inexhaustible. 

He is with all martyrs against evil 
deeds, with sacrifice against barter. 

He no longer holds the vinegar-soaked 
sponge as a solace for His human and 
divine mouth: only the savage wind of 
battle brings healing to His wounds. 

Behold heaven and earth and sea are 
full of presages. 



»5 

We are fighting hand to hand with 
Time — until Time shall be our own. 

Events will not overcome us. They are 
the shoes we lace and unlace upon our 
feet that are going whither we mean them 
to go. 

One thing is worth while, one thing is 
certain: light has forsaken the faces of 
the hordes for ever, and is increasing 
daily above the heads of the legions. 

Comrades, lift up your heads ! 

Bells of fire axe ringing throughout our 
sky of promise : one tolls on the San Mi- 
chele, another tolls on the Faiti ; one 
rings out a volley on the Pasubio, ano- 
ther rings out a volley on the Grappa. 

Thus each one of us may apply to 
himself the martyr's victorious saying: 
(( For me, this is a festival which I would 
hasten. There is no hungry or thirsty 
man who hungers and thirsts as I do that 
I may fight and suffer ». 



TO THE RECRUITS OF 1900 



THRONGS of this fourth May, was not 
your farewell song a song of thanks- 
giving ? 

Some of you were no sooner out of 
their mothers' sight, than they knelt in 
the middle of the road and kissed the 
dust of the wayside. And some, of a 
lighter mind, throwing away the com- 
mentated book of Philoctetus or Ajax in 
the hall of their school, danced the dance 
of Sophocles after their own fashion. 
Streets and suburbs and roadsides echoed 
the sound of voices as crazy as the light- 
headed twitter of swallows at sundown 



\/ 



120 

— that think they are weaving the worn 
sky anew above the roofs of those who 
dwell in anxiety. 

You were weaving anew the hopes of 
your city. You were widening the green 
of our flag in the dubious air and in the 
faithless sunset, above all those who are 
tired, who are anxious, who desire to sup 
well and sleep their fill, who are sick with 
fear, who are born slaves, who are gorged 
with acquired wealth, who are still to be 
bought, who are fretting to sell Ital}' from 
the threshold of their half -closed shops, 
who call down the weight of a leaden 
knee on her weary breast and of an iron 
heel on her pale neck, in order to hasten 
the relief of their minor discomforts. 

Praise be to God and man ! It has been 
given us to hear a cry of heiroic gratitude, 
the most noble cry there is on earth. 

That cry of gratitude uttered before 
full sacrifice, before entire immolation, 



J21 

has so pure a sound that it goes straight 
to the heart of the Eternal. O my chil- 
dren, it is through you that the sign of 
eternal Italy is once more set upon our 
hearts. Let us thank the God of salvation, 
the Author of our new salvation. Give 
thanks to Him. Give praise to the God 
of our Rally. A gift has been given you 
which is more than divine. 

Truly you are the most fortunate. You 
are the favourite and the elect. Yours is 
the happier privilege, beyond that of your 
brothers of a year ago. If there be such a 
thing as perfection of destiny, it has been 
granted you, it has been made manifest 
in you. Of all beings on earth, you are 
the most to be envied. The dead and the 
living envy you. Goffredo Mameli suffers 
despair because he cannot die once more 
with you. Sing him his own song again, 
that he may dream himself with you. 

As it is not true that death is the same 



v 



122 

for all, neither is it true that birth is the 
same for all. 

You must thank your own star. You 
were not born in the dawn of a day or of 
a year; you were born in the dawn of 
a century, and of all centuries the great- 
est. The centuries too, like the morning, 
have their carol and their quickening 
thrill. The song of your cradle was the 
song of the centuries that you did not 
hear, and that we did not hear. Or 
perhaps we only heard the first stanza, 
and its numbers broke down under the 
strain of the things it foretold. 

There is a discordant similarity be- 
tween the fate of a certain bitter fighter 
of history — he, too, young — and your 
own later fate. You are students of the 
classics and may perhaps remember it. 

I fancy that your life too was tied to a 
burning brand on your hearth; and that 
the mother of each one of you took that 



J23 

brand and laid it away in the deepest 
places of love and fear. 

Unlike that mother of old, yours has 
not replaced it on her hearth in anger, in 
atonement for a blind sin; but has 
thrown it with a magnificent spasm into 
the greatest flame that has ever made 
havoc of our spirits. 

It is given to you to burn blamelessly 
where the fire flames wildest ; to wear 
yourselves out in the sublimity of a fury 
in which men transcend their humanity 
and become immortal. Each one of you 
is about to become a holocaust in the 
word's holocaust. 

Could you have dreamed of all that 
at your mothers' knee ? Even the blessed 
grow pale before so much beatitude. 
Well may the poet of the future rise up 
and call you blessed. 

I have said : to burst into flame ; and 
that is the sudden word for your dazzling 
action. You reach the summit of this 



124 

furious flame at one bound. You pass 
without transition into the zone which 
is beyond human limitations. 

Called upon to live, with your dream 
still warm on your precocious flesh, you 
enter a life that renews, transmutes, mul- 
tiplies and exalts in each of its instants 
all the forces which have made up the 
past of mankind, conjures up those which 
have violently escorted history and vio- 
lently draw man nearer to his own fu- 
ture; so that in order to breathe in this 
life the soul itself must break through 
and transcend its furthest boundaries. 

Called upon to fight, not with the sword 
of the paladins but with the rifle which 
is common to all, you enter a battle 
wherein the humblest soldier of the line 
is raised up to the level of the event, and 
the event itself is the highest and great- 
est that has ever hovered above massacre. 

Called upon to die, while none of you 



125 

can believe in death, you enter into an 
immortality which is as real as the ground 
beneath your feet, as the air in your 
nostrils, as the light between your lashes ; 
not a long shadow of life, but the infinite 
radiance of life, not an inscription carved 
on an inert tablet, but spirit operating 
fetterless in the fullnes of time. 

What then are the songs of Tirteaus ? 
or the epigrams of Simonides ? « Here the 
battle between Persia and the land of 
Pelops took place ». Cast from you the 
books that tell the examples of old. Let 
the silent lion of Leonidas stay in its 
mountain gorge. The men of today have 
invented a courage which was unknown 
to Rome and Sparta, to lions and eagles. 
We have seen that human courage, like 
all other human things, has no measure. 
Every day it would seem that the summit 
of heroism had been reached ; and the 
next day an unknown hero goes beyond 



126 

that summit. Do not despair of surpassing 
him too. 

The battle in France surpasses a thou- 
sand times the glory of Thermopylae. 
The key of the country is thrust into the 
lock of every heart that resists. If one 
fights under a shadow, it is something 
quite other than the barbed arrows of 
the Persians that darkens the sky. Men 
chew poison, and drink flame and their 
tears are dark as blood. To the masked 
soldier of Picardy the darkest of the Dan- 
tesque abysses would seem a truce. 
They say a defender rises up from each 
clod ? But there are no more clods. There 
are only devouring craters. The defender 
is born again from his own soul, and his 
own soul is his miracle. 

Consider that there may be an even 
more wonderful battle : the battle of Italy ! 



127 

You will fight that battle. Give thanks 
to the God of your Rally. You will go 
towards that supreme battle, singing. 

Yesterday still, you were but children. 
Your mother set your hair straight, lit 
the lamp for your tasks, smoothed down 
the sheet for your sleep. The voice none 
may disobey has called you; you have 
gone forth and straightway you have felt 
in your throats another breath : the breath 
from the heighs. Where have you been 
lifted up ? And now you understand, 
better than through the reading of fables, 
the meaning of transfiguration, and what 
ravishment may signify. This is a time 
of understanding — the spirit's hour, if 
ever there has been one. 

Yesterday still, you were but children, 
and now you seem so great to us ! We 
forget your elder brethren for a moment, 
those who are nailed down in the trench- 
es, and the scarred veterans, to look 
only upon you, our beardless saviours, 



J28 

who have overtaken us. You must grow 
great in our hopes, you who have woven 
them anew. You must master our horizon, 
you who have opened it out to us. 

A titanic creator helps me to find an 
image of your greatness — - he of the squa- 
re forehead seamed with seven straight 
lines, the saddest of our race, who saw 
his city shamed and liberty extinguished 
in crapulous nausea and Italy given up 
for centuries to the lust of her masters. 

On that ceiling which is the ordered 
firmament of destiny, where he has treat- 
ed mystery as the storm treats the bitter 
ocean, through an Appollonian inspira- 
tion of hope, he has created a magnified 
image of all heroic youth. 

The young men are placed on their 
plinths as on momentary thrones, as if 
about to start for a distant fight, for a 
far conquest. They dominate sin, shame, 
misfortune, fear and death. They tower 
over the prophets and the sybils, because 



J29 

they are not the expounders of the Word 
but the makers of the Word, because 
they do not announce the future but shape 
it, do not threaten evil but defy it. 
In the background, other creatures are 
stirring and straightening themselves and 
throwing each other, suffering and peri- 
shing. The virgin heroes look only on the 
sign, intent on testing the armour of their 
bones by the measure of their restrained 
impulse. They are about to spring to their 
feet before ever the cock should crow, 
shouting : « I believe » . 

Today we see you raised up beyond 
sin and shame and misfortune and fear 
and death. Your road may be full of 
blood and shadow, but you tread it with 
an airy radiance, fulfilled, whole in our 
sight. You are as the living frieze of the 
soul's temple. Mud does not reach you, 
shadow does not touch you. You are the 
unhurt and the immune. 



J30 

Have you not seen them weep, the 
women of your own blood whom you 
love ? I have heard the mothers of Man- 
tova preaching hatred, for the perpetual 
enemy, sanctifying persistent and unwear- 
ied hatred with their raised fists and 
hard faces. Have you not seen yours 
sobbing as they embraced you, stam- 
mering oxit their leavetaking ? 

Behind your own women, stood those 
in mourning, the parched-eyed ones who 
went from Sicily to the Veneto, from 
Puglia to Lombardy, with a single piece 
of bread wrapped in a handkerchief, tra- 
velling for days and days after the manner 
of cattle, that they might see their sons 
dying with a smile for the faith. Behind 
your own women stood sisters in mour- 
ning, sweethearts in mourning, widows 
and orphans : a vast black company, an 
army of sorrow. They all stood quite 
still, with fixed gaze. 

Do you not know now the silences that 



J3J 

are a sterner command than an}' mere 
cry can be ? 

And behind ail that black stood the 
invalids, the cripples, the mutilated ones, 
the maimed, the larne, the paralysed — 
trunks no longer supported by their feet 
but resting on their groins, faces patched 
and botched, with their seams and their 
grafted skins ; the holy monsters that halt 
as they go, born of the womb and re- 
fashioned by mechanical means ; all the 
human bodies pruned by the war to 
whom that ghastly pruning has given a 
greater courage as it increases the vigour 
of trees. 1 he martyrs who had survived 
were there — the torn and dismembered 
confessors whose testimony was still li- 
ving in their mouths, whose final sen- 
tence is glory : « This is that pruning 
of which Christ spoke, when he said that 
every tree which bore fruit in Him would 
be pruned by God that it might bear 
more fruit » . The one-eyed and the blind 



132 

were there ; those who have accepted dar- 
kness that the light of the world might be 
preserved, who can no longer scrutinise 
countenances, but judge the truth of 
things by the sound of footsteps. They 
are the cut hedge, the cleared wood that 
victory will thrill to and bow down to 
as she passes, when you shall bring her 
back to your country at the head of your 
earth-coloured battalions. 

If you be beautiful, have you humbled 
your beauty ? If you be strong, have you 
gathered your strength within your heart ? 

For they all see you, and feel that you 
are the new branches planted on their 
lopped stems, the new sprouts of their 
vigour, the green shoots that have burst 
from their sun-filled trunks. That a raw 
cut is beneficial « to let in the sun », must 
have been said for them, and it is the 
sunshine within them which has made 
you so resplendant. 

And behind these, there are the dead. 



133 

in a hollow of the Carso, beyond the 
blood-soaked Vallone towards Nova Vil- 
la, is that skeleton still there which the 
landslip revealed, standing up against 
the red earth washed by the storm, with 
the holes of its cranium turned towards 
*the enemy ? 

And near the Observatory of the Bom- 
barde, to the west of the Veliki, in that 
split reef of hell, is that raised arm among 
the stones still there with its closed fist : 
one single tenacious coil of cartilage and 
siinew and bone, turned towards the 
enemy ? 

What if the rains of yesterday, the 
clear rains of an Italian April, have car- 
ried away the earth from our sloping ce- 
meteries ? What if the dead appear ? 
What if their lonely, fleshless feet are 
bare ? We took their hobnailed boots from 
them that we might march on further, 
beyond charnel-houses and graveyards, 
further and still further on. And we men- 



\x 



134 

tioned them in a votive song when we 
gathered them together on the altar of 
the roofless church of Doberdo, that was 
filled with wounded lying on straw. 

What does it matter ? Bones are bones. 
Our dead are living and fighting still. 
They are all standing up, they too. Today 
is their May-day. Battalions in your novi- 
ciate, this May-day is the festival of the 
dead who are yet living and fighting. 

Look only to them. Look no more to 
your own women, nor to the bereaved 
women nor to the orphans nor to the 
crippled. Look only to them, as they look 
to you. To no other life may you so 
powerfully communicate your own life. 

A similar communion comes to my 
mind. V/e had brought one of our men 
to the holy ground of A.quileia, to the 
tomb of our earlier dead, of our first mar- 
tyrs. The cementery was thronged, full 
of armed soldiers. The mounds of earth 



135 

interrupted their lines. And the youth of 
the last call were there, your brethren 
older by one year, those of Ninetynine, 
with their clean-shaven faces in the sun- 
shine, their feet between one grave and 
the next. It was in June, on the day of 
San Leone. A voice was speaking beside 
the sanctuary. And, as the words rose, 
faces bent down under the weight of 
checked tears. And then, one saw 
the shining bayonet surpassing the grey 
helmet, like a clear straight flame, like 
sharp, white fire. It was the Pentecost 
of the dead, the ardour of the dead crown- 
ing the peerless sacrifice. 

Your feet do not tarry among tombs 
today; the\- hasten along a straight road. 
But the subterranean flame is thick upon 
your heads as in that vision. And this 
year the fiery Pentecost precedes the 
third anniversary by five days. Five days 
and one night. 



136 

And here is the prayer of your vigil, 
O Initiates both of the next and of the far 
victory. The prayer of all free men : 



O dead who are in earth as you are in heaven, 

hallowed be your names, 

The kingdom of your spirit come, 

your will be done on earth. 

Give to our faith its daily bread. 

Keep alight within us our holy hatred, as we will 

[not deny your love. 

Lead us not into any infamous temptation, 

deliver us from all vile doubt. 

And, if it be necessary, 

we will fight, not to our last drop of blood. 

but with you to our last grain of ashes. 

If it be necessary, 

we will fight until our just God 

shall come to judge the quick and the dead. 

So be it. 



THE SOLDIER' S CROWN 



V^ 



OLDIERS of the Tuscan Brigade, 
comrades of the seventyseventh re- 
giment, comrades of the second batta- 
lion, I stand here before you humble and 
yet proud, with quivering heart and uplift- 
ed brow. If ever laurels have been de- 
creed to me by vain judges in a life of 
which even the memory has disappeared, 
I throw them away for this harsh Carsic 
crown, for this piece of metal picked up 
beyond death while it was still hot and 
given me today after so much fate under 
the gaze of a great fraternal Shade de- 
sirous, in its anxiety to fight once more, 



\ 



140 

of being present at this warlike rite of 
our brotherhood. 

But this day cannot be mine, my bre- 
thren. This can only be the votive day of 
the martyr of Aquileia, sacred to the 
hero of the Timavo. Let us look upon it 
as his anniversary, hurried forward by 
the imminence of battle. There are yet 
sixteen days : time to celebrate it with 
some heroic deed, such as he would 
expect from his wolves of the Veliki, of 
the Faiti and San Giovanni. 

If today be a day for the proffering 
of vows, may fate decree that on the 
28 th of this same May we may have 
joined in the fight, and that in the eve- 
ning of the same day he may be with 
us, as if risen again and made blessed 
in our victory. 

It was on All Saints' Day. Do the 
survivors remember ? Do the veterans 
remember ? A golden battle fought in the 



light from the east. We know and we 
feel — we have felt it more than once 
and on that occasion more than at any 
other time — that there are days of action 
which are not heralded by the sun but 
by the glory which spreads over the face 
of the dawn. Then, for the brave, all 
becomes a swift miracle. 

It was All Saints' Day. Surely all the 
Saints of our fatherland had shed their 
glory in the air of that zone whence the 
soldiers rushed to the assault. Men had 
never so shone before, things had never 
so shone. The sun progressed like a 
transfiguration. Each muddy hollow 
seemed a cup cut out of rock crystal. The 
mouth of the foul caverns radiated as if 
they contained the Divine Manger. The 
wallet of the Spouse of Poverty could 
not have been more resplendant than the 
canvas knapsacks carried by the sold- 
iers. The deal crosses shone, the stretch- 
ers shone. The halo of our conquest 



J42 

shone too, like a rnostrance. And, above 
all, blood shone resplendant. Which of 
you remembers that wounded man whose 
hand was utterly red, gleaming like the 
point of a firebrand pointed at the 
enemy ? I can see it still, and it still 
dazzles me. Courage is the mystic splen- 
dour of our mortal veins. On that hand 
a gold ring appeared and disappeared 
— a marriage ring, the symbol of faith : 
a perpetual sign for you in your assaults. 
It was All Saints' Day. Fearlessly, the 
sky had drawn near to the unfriendly 
earth. As once on Golgotha, the silence 
of the sky descended on those resounding 
calvaries where nothing was left of the 
woods save a few stumps ' of armless 
crosses. Sometimes the shells gave out 
a clear sound as of beaten cymbals. 
Their very crash seemed to be golden, 
like powerful bars of forceful music 
beaten on golden timbrels. The begin- 
ning of an assault was like those dizzy 



143 

dances one watches in the land of dreams. 
The assailants sang. I can stiil hear 
the ten strokes hammered out one after 
the other by the Austrian four inch 
guns; and the shouts and the singing. 

Veliki : a golden battle, the fairest 
battle of our East ! 

Veliki : a victory with the voice of 
some light-footed Muse. 

The men seemed to bite into the blue 
air. The light multiplied the effect of the 
impact from moment to moment. That 
impact itself was an ascension into the 
heavens. Strength seemed to rebound 
from death. Death was dragged upwards 
hy ardour and clamour, like a peasant 
woman caught by the contagion of a tu- 
mult who should start singing a song of 
fury. The fallen were not an encum- 
brance but an impulse. The wounded 
became the standard-bearers of the scar- 
let ensign. The summit was only a su- 
blime feeling in the breasts of those who 



v 



144 

meant to reach it. There was nothing. but 
rocks, shambles, crumbled trunks, iron 
spikes, things wrenched apart and smoke 
and corpses. But everywhere too there 
was the light of Italy, the noon-day of 
Italy. 

It was round about that hour. Twenty 
minutes of rapture had done it. At noon 
the Veliki was ours. The stupefied pri- 
soners stammered : « How was it done ? » 

It was like the flight of a wing that 
leaves no trace. 

The first cry had won the mountain. 

The miracle of the Sabotino was being 
renewed. As in the lightning-like storm- 
ing of the dismal mountain that seemed 
to dry up the Isonzo with its infernal 
roots, your white discs ^— signals of con- 
quest — were but leaves lost in the plun- 
der of a wayward wind. As the great 
breath of our victory lept over the fierce 
crest of that height, rushing down the 
other slope of San Valentino, of San 



145 



Mauro, of Salcano leaving them lifeless, 
so it left the Veliki behind, naked and 
solitary, that it might rush on further. 

From beyond the height that was bur- 
sting into sudden craters, in the hollow 
that was afterwards given the name of 
my own flag, in the dark cave that the 
constant booming seemed to fill, we held 
counsel. It was but an impatient halt. 

There is only one witness left me of 
that deep hour: our General, gloriously 
wounded on the Sabotino, the quiet mast- 
er of all daring, who by the grace of 
fate has found his brigade again and is 
gathering up in his hands your old and 
your new fortitude. 

We sat in the cave, but the will of 
all was already straining towards the 
other summit, was already beating down- 
on the Faiti like an implacable wind. 
We sat hunched up on the stones of that 
savage crypt holding the flag spread out 
on our knees as if to sew up its hems 

to 



J46 

with thread dipped in the blood of our 
hearts' devotion. A single stump of can- 
dle burned on the g round ; gradually 
melting away like the last of the seven 
tapers on the iron triangle at Tenebrae 
in the Holy Week celebrations. It was 
burning down to hasten the tremendous 
decision, to hurry on the divine sacrifice. 
It wavered, but our spirit did not waver. 
It shook, but our nerves did not shake. 
With its darts and the shadows it cast, 
it served the purpose of showing up more 
crudely the purpose carved between brow 
and chin on those bony faces. When it 
went out, each one of us carried its light 
in himself. We all sprang up, Giovanni 
Randaccio first of all. None let go the 
ends of the flag. As he started to go out 
first, he dragged each of the others 
after him by the end of flag he had been 
gripping. What in life can equal in value 
the thrill of that sworn comradeship ■' 
And, had I been struck at that moment, 



147 

should I not have died in the purest state 
of grace ? 

The shell did not hit me: it only show- 
ered splinters round me. I was able to 
shake myself and go on my way unhurt. 

Then, Giovanni Randaccio said to one of 
his men : « Take the ring off that shell- 
case. We will make it into a crown for 
our comrade ». 

The soldier set to work. With the point 
of his bayonet he tried to detach the cop- 
per from the steel, working carefully and 
lightly. 

(( Why are you so long about it ? » his 
captain asked him » ; Are you afraid of 
spoiling the crown ? 

(( No m, answered the soldier, « The 
crown will anyhow be fine. I am afraid 
of spoiling the point of my bayonet 
which I shall need before long » . 

It was a manly answer worthy of one 
who had stormed the Faiti. That bayo- 
net was afterwards stuck on the extreme 



J48 

salient that marked our effort towards 
the East, between Castagnevizza and the 
Vippacco. It was a bayonet of the second 
Battalion. 

Giovanni Randaccio tells this tale in 
one of the fragments of prose he used 
to write on the wrong side of the map 
he had with him on the battle-field. That 
map is his legacy to me and I treasure it 
as I would a patent of nobility. 

His courtesy, which was wide as his 
prowess, advised his soldiers to engrave 
on the circle of copper a gold and a sliver 
laurel leaf : « The silver one for the poet 
and the gold one for the soldier, because, 
in Italy today, the gold laurel leaf belongs 
only to those who fight ». 

He wanted to offer me this gift from 
his soldiers with his own hands. But the 
impact of fate gave neither him nor you 
nor me one interval of respite. The day 
for the gathering was continually put off 
without date, from venture to venture. 



149 

We found one another again on the road 
to Trieste, one evening in the third 
spring. He seemed to have grown great- 
er, to have the stature of his hopes. The 
Latin Timavo was his lethal stream. And 
then it seemed to me as if the crown too 
had sunk into the dark whirlpool. But 
you were taking care of it. And today, 
although I am receiving it from you, 1 
feel as if he himself had brought it back 
to me. It is yours : the soldier's crown, 
the crown of all soldiers. There is a 
golden leaf for each one of you today. 

Which of you veterans remembers the 
dispatch issued by the Comander on the 
3rd of November 1916? 

It begins : « Officers, non-commissio- 
ned officers and men, you are all heroes ». 

It is the dispatch he addressed not 
only to his Wolves but to all the soldiers 
worthy of the name which is above all 
other names today, a name which re- 



J50 

sounds on the noblest bronze of fame, 
a name to praise and celebrate for ever. 
Giovanni Randaccio was the exempla- 
ry soldier of the line. He could only have 
been a foot soldier; he seemed to have 
been so stamped from his birth. He was 
a son of the soil, a creature of earth and 
stone, of mud and dust. Through a love 
of daring, a hankering after novelty, he 
had tried to take on wings, to lift himself 
up by flight and fight in the air. When I 
first met him, he was still wearing the 
aviator's armlet, and seemed to regret 
not being up there in the blue if he hap- 
pened to catch the throb of a winged 
machine from some encumbered com- 
munication trench. But it was not so. In 
the air, he would have lost his real 
strength, he would have mislaid his real 
power. He was born a foot soldier. He 
rode like one. The shape of his horse 
did not agree with his own structure. He 
only rode that he might tower above his 



' 151 

men when he harangued them. The bow 
of his saddle was his balcony. Then he 
would dismount; and when it came to 
righting, it was in his calves that he put 
his faith. 

He was an example of all tough vir- 
tues. He was the man for modern war- 
fare : daring re-fashioned on the model 
of patience. He was the true labourer of 
victory: in a word, a soldier of the line. 

He was as you are yourselves, you who 
have fought with him, as those are who 
fought without him, as those are who 
will fight remembering him, as those are 
who will fight without remembering him. 

When I addressed some subdued word 
of praise to him, he used to answer curt- 
ly, with that sudden transparent pallor 
which was a sign of deep emotion with 
him : « All my men are worth as much 
as I ». And he would point to the dread 
trenches cemented by a motionless cou- 
rage. 



J52 

Out of his humble regard for the thou- 
sands and thousands of unknown heroes, 
he one day took the blue stripes from 
off his breast, and 1 followed his exam- 
ple. It seemed to us that we would thus 
be nearer to the silent God who watches 
over you all, who marks you all, who 
will give to each one his prize. 

Who shall speak to you of the heroism 
of old, O soldiers of the line 7 You might 
well tear the pages of those well-known 
examples and use them as a lining for 
the rotting boots supplied you by the un- 
scrupulous. 

That heroism was a flash, a stroke of 
lightning, a sudden flare, a superhuman 
movement. It had its brief word and its 
rapid gesture. It had its birth in the air, 
in the sight of all, like an instantaneous 
statue, like an improvised group, like a 
glorious process of casting or smelting 
that glory arrested and cooled for all 
time. 



T53 

Yours is like your own bones, it is 
within you as your skeleton is ; it is your 
internal armour, it is always there ; it 
holds your weak flesh together and keeps 
it continually exposed to the most awful 
destruction. Your life is as the bunting 
of your flag, and your courage is its staff. 
There are hoisted flags that the wind 
rends and tears away ; but the staff re- 
mains. Your bodies may fall, but your 
courage remains erect. One might almost 
say that it is not dissolved, but stays on to 
adjust the aim of the dropped rifle. All 
soldiers know that there is none more 
accurate than the dead man's rifle. Whoe- 
ver has picked one up and aimed with it, 
has never missed his shot. Is it not so ? 

a You are all heroes » Giovanni Ran- 
daccio cried out to you after that three 
days' delirium on the Garso between All 
Saints and the day of Saint Charles. It 
was a rapt assault and all else seemed 
forgotten. But you were heroes before 



J54 

that, before your spring over the top, be- 
fore you began your climb, before that 
foward run. 

Heroes; and yet you seemed things 
rather than men ; poor things like crum- 
bled stones, disembowelled sacks, shape- 
less helmets, empty boxes, broken bot- 
tles — motionless there in trench and 
hollow and cavity ; shrunken, your backs 
to the enemy's fire, your boots in the 
marsh mud the colour of dysentery half- 
way up your legs; nailed there in the 
scorching whirlwind of death, in the 
midst of an uproar that seems always 
the same but is only a menace from the 
different tongues to which one can only 
reply: I am here, I am here, I am here ». 

We know that in the ancient sacrifices, 
men had to hold their throats out to the 
knife without closing their eyes. The 
voice of a witness would cry : « Cut ! » 
When the executioner missed his stroke 
and had to repeat it, a yell of indignation 



155 

would rise from the bowels of the crowd. 
Stillness in the expectation of death has 
always been esteemed the highest test of 
self-control : a suspense lasting a few se- 
conds. But yours is a suspense of days, 
weeks, months, years ; not under cold 
steel, but under the fierce menace of a 
scourge never before imagined even by 
that harsh soul of our own race who 
grew dark in the smoke of his hell, by 
that chastiser who plunged his adversaries 
in pitch, nailed them head downwards, 
burned them with fire, soiled them with 
foul rains, had them clawed in pieces by 
hounds. 

It is said that there is a life, and that 
there is a death. One lives by life and 
one dies by death. It would seem true. 
But for the soldier, something exists which 
is not life and something which is not 
death; a new element, a kind of suspen- 
ded limit, a kind of mysterious brink 
where breathing is impossible ; whe- 



156 

reon, however, he manages to breathe 
and often laughs and sings and does not 
perish, because I maintain that that ele- 
ment is man's lesser immortality. 

Food for guns ? Their flesh, perhaps, 
that of the herds that called you Wolves 
on Monte Melino. And I care not whe- 
ther I be unjust. I see only you, and I 
only know you. Who is it that lifts you 
from your trenches ? Who causes you 
to stand erect, who hurls you out beyond 
defence ? I have seen you. Who gives the 
mighty shock to your muddied cumber- 
someness and makes you ready at one 
stroke, as when you close the obturator 
of your rifles by striking the lever with 
a stone? I have seen you well, and I 
maintain that you were not flesh. I my- 
self was dissolved in passion in watching 
you, became no more than a breath. You 
seemed to me like some form of super- 
human will, a weightless impact, an of- 
fering rising like a handful of incense 



157 

thrown on a brasier. Men who have 
come from the fields, from factories and 
offices, from arts and crafts, peasants, 
working men, middle class men from all 
parts and of all trades, turned wild as 
arnbushmen at a cavern's mouth, who 
bite from a loaf and swill from a 
flagon, who crouch in dirty lairs that 
smell of drains and graves, v/ho can 
only wash your faces in your own sweat 
or in ditches, a filthy and heavy under- 
ground people, in that moment you were 
but one swift flame, one single soul re- 
splendant as in a Resurrection. 

O wonderful infantry of Italy, the whole 
and supreme flower of our discordant 
race, who have borne witness to your 
faith in eternal Italy by three years of 
martyrdom, what palms shall we offer 
you, with what leaves shall we crown 
you ? Metal will not avail. Gold is minted 
today into too many false coins. I recall 






158 

the thousand and thousand sun-haloes 
radiated on your Veliki at the victory of 
All Saints' Day. What are the journals 
of your two regiments, or the journals of 
a hundred other regiments, if not the 
Acts of the Martyrs? 

The true word was spoken by that 
chief who cried out at Oslavia, between 
a roar and a sob, his heart in his throat, 
as he watched his companions bleeding 
unmoved from circuit to circuit — grey 
cloaks and rags of flesh, both super- 
fluous garments for such assailants, flut- 
tering round the dizzy wheel of daring: 
« One ought to kiss the ground those 
soldiers tread ! » . 

Those soldiers of the line whose feet 
left their imprint on the tawny clay of 
Oslavia, those who trampled underfoot 
the clotted mire of Podgora, those who 
were ensnared by the red slime of the 
Carso, all — from the San Michele to 
the Monte Nero, from the Vodice to the 



159 

Ermada, from Tolmino to Pecinka, from 
Sagrado to Plezzo, from Plava to Do- 
berdo, whose victorious names outnum- 
ber the record of Brescia — all, from the 
first ones who hacked away barbed wire 
with pincers and shears to the last who 
overran the passes opened up by the 
crushing bombardment, all are the he- 
roes of the most laborious battle that has 
been fought for the cause of free man on 
the united front. 

It is the battle of nine hundred days. 
It lives behind us, kindles the soul's 
horizon with its own light. The shadow 
of an expiated fault is powerless against 
its splendour. Our dead are occupying 
for us every foot that has been conquered. 
They are keeping alight for us the fires 
of remembrance with their imperishable 
bones on the heights we stormed. 

(( My wolves », a living Giovanni Ran- 
daccio cries out to you, « there is also a 
fire on the Faiti and a fire on San Gio- 



v" 



160 

vanni. But there are other fires to be lit. 
I hold the flame close gripped in my 
hand ». 

The ark of Aquileia is uncovered. The 
magnanimous one is come to march at 
your head, bearing the flag wrapped 
round his breast, the one that draped his 
bier. It is his shoulderstrap of the Veliki. 
Do you remember? 

Between the Giudicarie and the Piave 
lagoons a battle is about to be kindled 
that will have but one name : the battle 
of Italy, your supreme test, O soldiers 
of the line, makers of your destiny, la- 
bourers of victory. 

I swear to you that for every tract of 
land you hold, for every inch you recover, 
every line pushed a little further on ; 
your country shall kiss the spot that 
bears the mark of your footsteps ! 



TO AMERICA IN ARMS 
IV JULY MCMXVIII 



J) 



1. f |CEANIC morning of Liberty, 
\^ heaved up from its founda- 
tions of blood and spirit on the 
shoulders of its thirteen artisans, 

2. day of the young Republic that made 
of its thirteen colonies a consular 
fasces of thirteen rods round the 
hatchet of thy pioneers, 

3. the men of Italy give praise to God 
who has granted them the sight of 
thy upstanding to the sound of a 
Roman victory. 

4. O Liberty, they hold out to thee 
the carved stone of the Grappa to be 

if 



J64 



thy crown and the flexible Piave to 
be thy necklace. 

5. O child of earth, thou hast come 
down from thy lonely pediment, and 
thou fliest not; but walkest abroad 
stamping thy unshod feet upon the 
ground. 

6. Look thou upon us ! We are thy love. 
The flash of thine eyes is dearer to 
us than the flicker upon our own 
hearthstones. 

7. Look thou upon us ! Recognise our 
Love. Divinely have we fought for 
thee, as the youth of the world fought 

at Marathon. 

8. We have woven a wreath for thee 
this day, with the hands of life and 
with the hands of death, which are 
both bountiful. 

9. A wreath of wheat-ears for the Fruit- 
ful One ! The hour of battle was the 



165 



harvest hour for the mother of wheat 
and of heroes. 

10. That they might reap, thy people 
have taken up the sickle ; they have 
drawn a sword that they might kill. 

11. The corn is bending in the fields: 
it shines like a battle host. 

12. The bread of victory is born to us, 
and our wounded shall have new 
beds of straw. 

1 3 . We have gathered in the harvest and 
have fought with our faces ever tur- 
ned towards the East. 

14. When we thirsted, we drank from 
our wounds as from a spring. 

15. O Liberty, the damp hill between 
Nervesa and Biadone has nourished 
us as the milk from thy breasts. 

16. For seven days and seven nights, 
heroic hearts have drawn from it their 
ever renewed strength. 



V 



166 

17. For seven dawns have our men seen 
thee rising from the Adriatic before 
sunrise, opening the gates of day. 

18. And they cried out: c Come forth, 
even if you should kill us ! Come 
forth ! and even should you mean 
death to us, we will not care ! ». 

19. It is the cry of this day, louder than 
the cry of the eagles of Aeschylus, 
wilder than the cry of Dante's Eryn- 
nies. 

20. Ordering batde to begin again and 
Time to stop and the dead' to arise 
and the living to multiply themselves 
in their own blood. 



II. 



21. Like unto the huge, white-maned 
froth horses, the myriad foaming 
chargers of the untamed Atlantic, 



167 

22. the tide of thy vigour, O Republic, 
flows towards the red shores where 
the hope of man grows greater the 
more it is made to bleed. 

23. The immortal eyes of dying heroes 
are watching thy light which dawns 
where their sun goes down, 

24. and thinking: « O eternity of the sea, 
never wilt thou know a finer force 
than that of the spirit which is 
ploughing through you ! » . 

25. It is not, O Republic, the immense 
pile of thy gold which is thy beauty, 
nor the inexhaustible plenty poured 
out for thee from the darkness by 
thy wingless genii, 

26. nor thy swift axe which turns thy 
forests into bright cities, nor the 
upward rush of thy tall houses which 
are as thy cathedrals ; 

27. nor the number of thy enslaved ma- 



\^ 



J68 

chines that serve thee for gain and 
for the comforts of thy ease, nor the 
pride which inflames and hammers 
out thy race. 

28. But one single word spoken to thee 
by a citizen's voice. It is that one 
word which has made thee the most 
beautiful. 

29. And lo ! thy gold and all thy me- 
tals and all thy factory furnaces and 
the whole of thy people are turned 
into living light. 

30. Thou art all light. Even the darkness 
of thy mines is irradiated, so that 
thy black coal is become as a dia- 
mond. 

31. In thy fixed eyes are the sun's sour- 
ces. From brow to heel thou art all 
light. 

32. The first hour — the white hour of 



169 

dawn — is bringing thee over the 
Ocean which is thy true soul. 

33. Before thy thousand prows come 
ploughing through sea and sky, thy 
word shall heal the deep heart of 
the world which is swollen with 
sorrow. 

34. Cloven by iron and burned by fire, 
the divine root shall bring forth new 
shoots for thee. 

35. We had known and misknown thee, 
we had loved and denied thee before 
cock-crow. 

36. Long we waited for the roll of thy 
ancient drum to awaken thy belated 
masses. 

37. Twice hadst thou given thy purple- 
sealed message, twice wert thou 
clothed in purple ; the quick and the 
dead awaited thy third message in 
the fierce night. 



170 

38. Glory be to thee ! At last thou wavest 
thy banner, scattering stars from its 
folds, and thy voice has thundered 
in the night: 

39. (( Live, because truth is living. Die, 
because death is immortal. Order 
your battle anew. We are the equals 
of Time. This is the war's beginning. 

40. If this be the hour of battle and 
harvest, here are sickles, here are 
weapons. Let us fight and reap. Let 
us die and gather in. We will no 
longer share our bread with the 
brute beast ». 



III. 

41. March on! John Brown's old song, 
rooted in the memory of the soil, 
bursts out anew from his ardent 
grave. 



m 

42. From the depths of the years it comes 
back and spreads the boom of the 
bells that tolled at the martyr's pas- 
sage to the West. 

43. March on! Fervent is the seed. The 
new men come forth in arms from 
thy tawny furrows and thy white 
roads, 

44. holding thy group of stars in their 
grip and putting ignoble peace to 
flight on all your roadways. 

45. March on! As in the valley of the 
Shenandoah, here are iron and fire, 
bood and sweat, gall and weeping, 
shouting and moaning, hunger and 
thirst, swift phalanx and unworthy 
herd. 

46. March on ! Now as then, in wood 
and moutain and plain, on river and 
lake and sea, let man daily invent 
his glory and his death. There is no 



V^ 



J72 



more sleep. There is no more truce. 
There is no more respite. March on ! 
Towards the vorld's battle. 

47. Stonewell Jackson awakes in the fair 
Virginian valley where the night bird 
is, knows his blood is still flowing 
and orders. « Onward ». 

48. He props himself on his unhurt el- 
bow, lifts up his maimed arm by the 
help of his soul, lets the red edges 
hang and orders, now as then: 
t( Bring on my men ! » 

49. Philip Sheridan springs once more 
into his saddle with the odour of de- 
feat in his nostrils; he sets his own 
heart in the mouth of his bay and 
gallops twenty miles. 

50. There is no bit in his horse's mouth 
— nor heart, for his heart is swifter 
than his four hoofs. And when he 
arrives, it is victory that takes him 
by the bridle. 



173 

51. « Ships ! Ships ! Ships ! » cries David 
Farragut, sinker of keels, burner of 
rafts and breaker of chains, whose 
faithful weapons were a straight 
prow and his naked soul. 

52. What pass is to be forced? What 
door is to be burst open ? What ar- 
mour is to be taken? He is pale. 
Sleep and glory were broken up for 
him in his grave by the hero of Pre- 
muda. 

53. a Wings ! Wings ! Wings ! » is the 
cry, not of the victorious one who 
springs from his grave at the call, 
nor of the young and panting elect, 
nor of the storm-footed crowd, 

54. but of Victory herself who, like the 
Victory of Athens, has no wings on 
her shoulders and migrates not, but 
arms her own species in myriads 
throughout the skies and stays with 
us: 



174 

55. Stays with us on the Piave, with us 
on the Maine, with us on our holiest 
rivers, with us on our sublime moun- 
tains, with us where she is the twin 
sister of death. 

56. O Liberator! Incessant is the thun- 
der. The roar of thunder lacerates 
the sky and makes of it an ever re- 
woven tissue. Infamous clouds blind 
us and smother the sight of battle. 
All is hidden martyrdom. But thy 
stature is the highest, thy voice is 
the strongest : 

57. Live on, because truth is living. Die. 
because death is immortal. Order 
your battle anew. We are the equals 
of Time. This is the war's beginning. 

58. If this be the hour of battle and har- 
vest, here are weapons, here are 
sickles. Let us fight and reap. Let us 
die and gather in. We will no longer 
share our bread with the brute beast. 



175 

59. We are marching on, not troops 
that are numbered and branded like 
flocks, not armies that are im- 
pelled by the goad like herds. An 
armed people is going forward, con- 
secrating its stars to the future. 

60. March on ! How long ? Until the road 
.o the East and the road to the West 
shall be free, until Liberty shall be 
alone with man between the four 
winds of the earth. Until the march 
of Time shall be done, if years be 
not enough for the task. An armed 
faith is advancing that has conse- 
crated its signs to the Future. 



CONTENTS 



I To the guard of the Piave . . . . p 9 

II To a gathering of officers of all bran- 

ches . . „ 19 

III To the Italians of the Latin Republics. „ 41 

IV To the Italians of the United States . ,, 53 

V To the 1899 recruits ...... .„ 69 

VI The winner cannot win. The loser 

cannot lose ......... 91 

VII The winged shadow and the shadow 

of the cross ........ „ 97 

VIII Easter-day of promise ....... 105 

IX To the recruits of 1900 ...... 117 

X The soldier' s crown „ 137 

XI To America in arms, IV July MCMXVIII „ 161 



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